Three Reasons to stop in Del Norte, Colorado

After a week in the campground at South Fork, it was time to head on down the road. Our camping neighbors gave us a hard time when they found out our next move was only 17 miles away at our destination in Del Norte, Colorado.

We are stopping here for three reasons. The first is that this town welcomes RVs to come spend one night at their city park. There are no hook-ups, but it's a beautiful place to spend a night. Mark is standing in the middle of the park by the swing set, and if you look behind him you can barely see our motor home, snuggled under the shade of those big trees. Thanks Del Norte!

A block away from our motor home's door is the Rio Grande River that flows through town. They've built a nice park with a board walk along the water, compliments of a "Get Outside Colorado!" grant.

Even though we are camping inside the city limits, the signs at the park are cautioning people about the mountain lion and bear sightings in this area. We didn't see either during our stay, but we do have an interesting story that was told to us by a camping neighbor. They were boondocking north of here about 40 miles in a wilderness area, and their car alarm went off during the night. When they shined their motor home headlights toward their car, they found that a black bear had managed to open their car door, and it slammed shut behind him! The trapped bear tore up everything inside their car until he finally managed to get a door open for his escape!

While we didn't see any mountain lions or bears, we did see a couple herds of bison in the pasture land outside of town.

While most of the herd was further away, this big bull came very close for a better picture. We got a good side view of this huge animal when he came to get a drink from the local mud hole.

We went to explore our new little town, and discovered a trail that would take us to the top of Lookout Mountain--the highest one around Del Norte with the signature "D" on it.

At 7,884 feet in elevation, Del Norte is in the high desert. As we hiked past the cactus and soap weed we were working hard to get to the top of that hill. It seemed higher than it looks!

As we hiked higher, we could see the little town of Del Norte below us. In the distance we see the outline of the southern edge of the Sangre de Christo mountains. From here, we could even see the white sand dunes that lie to the west of those mountains. We visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park the first week of July, so we have almost connected the circle we are making through Colorado this summer.

Our wildflower picture of the day is this bright paint brush. It's not an unusual flower, but its timing seems unusual to us. We are used to seeing these bright orange flowers in March and April in the south, so it's interesting to see them blooming brightly this late in the year.

We finally made it to the top for some great views. Because Lookout Mountain is the tallest around this valley, we could see for miles!

You can see Denisa perched on the top of the mountain like a queen surveying her kingdom far below.

Beyond the flat valley, we see that mountains rise up in the distance. We said that we had three reasons to visit Del Norte. One was the free camping spot at the park, and the second and third reasons are hidden in those mountains just north of town--La Garita Arch and Pentitente Canyon. But those two reasons are the subject of tomorrow's blog.