Sugarloaf Campground - Will it be our favorite Campground of the Year?

 After a lazy morning of soaking up all the time in our electrical site, we hooked the pickup on and headed straight west out of Cheyenne on I-80. In 41 miles we would pause for a travel-day-pit-stop at Veedauwoo Recreation Area. (No, we don't know how to pronounce it either.) We unhooked the pickup and drove it into an otherworldly collection of boulders.

We saw a picture of this place in a book at the museum yesterday, and we thought it looked interesting. That's how we sometimes find our next travel destination.

We took the paved trail through the center of the boulder mountains. But when the trail ended, we made our own path higher and higher. 

It's easy to find Denisa's bright blouse among the boulders.

On the other hand, Mark's boulder-colored shirt blends in nicely with the scenery.

While we were content to stay at the bottom and scramble over a few rocks, some people were doing technical climbing at the top of the mountains of boulders. Do you see them?

If we zoom in to the top of that mountain of rocks, you can see the red shirt of the climber above, and the climber with the red backpack below.

Veedauwoo has quite a reputation among rock climbers!

We stopped at one of the many picnic areas where Mark was holding up the rock overhead. We have wandered into another of God's wonders!

After that little detour to Veedauwoo, we hooked the pickup back behind the motor home, and continued to our final destination of the day. We left I-80 and traveled straight west on Wyoming's Highway 130 through some rain.

We even got caught in a July snow flurry on this trip. We had a little freshly-fallen snow on the side of the road, but that won't last long this time of the year.

Our ears needed to pop as we gained elevation all the way past 10,000 feet. We also noticed that our shorts were a little cool for the weather up here in the Snowy Mountain Range of Wyoming.

We are heading to Sugarloaf Campground, in a Forest Service recreation area that gets great reviews. It's a first-come-first-served campground that usually doesn't open for another week. But Mark found on the internet that they opened three days ago. We're hoping that few people know that information, so we can get one of the coveted 16 sites in this popular campground.

We unhooked the pickup at the entry, and Denisa drove it behind as we headed up the final road past drifts of snow.

Denisa took another picture, as we don't often get pictures of the motor home rolling past the snow on the way to our campground in July!

We were relieved to see that there were a number of empty sites. Many times Forest Service campgrounds are limited to small RVs, but we had several choices that would fit our 35-foot motor home. We pulled into the best one at the top of the hill.

Complete with our own flower garden, we're thinking that this might be our favorite campground this year! 

We've been in some nice campgrounds over the years, but this is the best view from our couch we have ever had!

Denisa immediately went into photographer mode, trying to get the best angle to portray the beauty around us. We have our own personal flower garden, with no yard work!

It looks like the white columbines are at their peak right now.

Can we say that we have wandered into yet another of God's wonders today? We had another rain shower, and a rainbow lit up our eastern sky.

When the sky cleared, we went for a walk to explore our campground. We are tucked into the Snowy Range of the Medicine Bow National Forest. This spot is surrounded by mountain lakes. At the front of our campground we have Libby Lake. Behind the lake is Sugarloaf mountain--the name-sake of our campground.

While the campground is open early, that doesn't mean that all the roads in the area are free from snow. The parking lot to the second lake is still drifted shut with this pile of snow in our new neighborhood. Incidentally, we love it that we are wearing jackets and jeans during July!

So it took some walking over snow to get to Lewis Lake. We're trying to decide which one we will kayak on, or if we can portage between the two and do both.

That's when we found the yellow alpine lilies in the wet areas between the lakes. 

These fragile little flowers bloom very early in the season when few people are around to enjoy them.

Another little rain shower blew through, and after the weather cleared Mark took the opportunity to start a camp fire. We're having gourmet camp-fire chili dogs tonight.

We were treated to our second rainbow since we moved to our new campground. We feel blessed to be here on top of the mountain where it's cool even during the middle of the summer.

To finish off the classic campfire supper, we're having smores for dessert featuring these perfectly toasted marshmallows.

As the sun sets on this perfect day from this beautiful camp site, we're enjoying pleasantly cool temperatures and smores. We are thinking that this might not just be our favorite campground of the year--it might be our favorite campground ever!