Crested Butte Wildflower Festival

Our day off this week fell on Monday, and we made plans to drive over to the town of Crested Butte, on the other side of Cottonwood Pass, past Taylor Lake Reservoir. In poking around the internet, I had found that Crested Butte hosts a wildflower festival every July. That sounded interesting, and off we went!

Up and over Cottonwood Pass...no snow or ice left anymore...we were above the clouds for awhile...used to be the only time I was above the clouds was in an airplane!

This was Cottonwood Pass back in May:

As we passed south of Taylor Lake reservoir, we had to halt for a cattle drive in progress, this never fails to amuse me and drive Casey insane :-)

Crossing the stream, heading to greener pastures, I guess

After surviving 8 miles of road construction, which consisted of the road being completely torn up, a pilot car to guide the traffic through, and a rather long wait, we made it to the turn-off going to Crested Butte. Sometimes, when I route ourselves to a new place via Microsoft's Streets and Trips, we do end up going an interesting way, and often say to ourselves, are we really supposed to be on this road? Jack's Cabin Cutoff was one of these, but it did get us over to Hwy 135 taking us into Crested Butte, so who are we to question the means??

Crested Butte is a very nice town. Formerly a coal mining town, it is now commonly referred to as "the last great Colorado ski town." Mount Crested Butte a couple miles to the north is the base area for skiers. That's where the obligatory condos and apartments for skiers are. The town is now in a heated battle to save Mount Emmons, the 'Red Lady", from being opened to molybdenum mining...it wishes to maintain the area's distinction as a skier's, biker's outdoor enthusiast's destination, and fear the environmental impact the mining would have the area. 

We picked up maps and information at the Festival headquarters, in the library of the high school. There were several wonderful volunteers working there, who would advise yo were to go to see the wildflowers, geared to the level of difficulty you wished to encounter while getting there...no extreme elevation changes and 10 mile hikes for these legs today!We were advised that the wildflowers this year were not extremely prolific, due to the drought conditions existing through most of the west..understandable. She directed us to Kebler Pass and Irwin Lake, saying that the wetland around the lake made for some of the best viewing so far. Makes sense. First, though, it was time for some lunch, so we headed down Elk Avenue, one of the main drags in town, found some parking for the monster truck :-), and took a walk down the avenue.

 

Many shops had displays that were stops on a garden tour right in town

Even shops not on the tour had pretty displays

On the other side of the fence was patio seating for the deli we stopped at for lunch...Sunflower Deli, they had great panini sandwiches and seating outside in front where we could sit with the dogs. Crested Butte is another dog-friendly town, as is so many places in Colorado. The east coast could take lessons...

Neat tin sculptures in the garden

The road up to Irwin Lake. There's a primitive campground and picnic areas at the lake. We parked in the picnic area parking, and set out on a walk around the lake. The path started out on a road, but that ended at a private residence, so we headed down to a dirt trail right along the edge of the lake, and were able to skirt around the private property

The dogs loved this walk, they got to go in the water a lot!

Beautiful views of the reddish mountains, so different from our chalk cliffs near the campground

View across the lake as we reached the marshy end

Pockets of assorted wildflowers along the way

We followed the creek up...

and found a waterfall! Now, to find a crossing spot...

and find the trail on the other side

beautiful view of the lake from the far end

The trail gets really close to the water here!

As other bloggers are doing, I played with the collage feature of Picasa and made this collage of wildflowers for you to enjoy

A beautiful view of wildflowers leading down to a valley.

It was a long day, we left the campground at 8AM and returned at 8PM. We really enjoyed our day at Crested Butte, the area is very nice, and there's a lot of hiking and biking to be done. I think there may be a return to this area for a longer stay in the future! I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I did taking them!

Downtown on Dwellable

Working, Working

July is here, and the days are filled with so many things to do. We have gotten rather busy here at the campground, with the weekends being full to capacity, and really not too many sites going empty during the weekdays. Fourth of July was odd this year. It seemed as if with the holiday being on a Wednesday, people didn't really know when to celebrate. People were coming and going on all different days, so there wasn't a big onslaught of check-ins or check-outs on any one day. Unlike today, where we have about 60% of the campsites checking in for the weekend! So this afternoon is an "all hands on deck" performance :-).

We have been having so much fun here. There have been and continue to be activities that all the workampers take part in. We have potlucks every Thursday night, and the only time anyone misses one is if it is their day off and they haven't made it back to the campground in time! The few summer seasonals we have staying here also enjoy coming to potlucks, and every now and then other campers come up and have dinner with us.

Candy Bar Bingo on Saturdays have been a hit as well. The price of admission is a full size candy bar, and that gets you a game card with 6 games on it. We then take all the candy bars we've received as admission fees, and divvie them up into 5 regular prizes and the big blackout grand prize. We've had some folks walk out with a pretty big bag of candy!

Tuesday nights are now game night, and if we're not working we like to come up and learn a new game. Although everyone has become fond of the Cards, Marbles and Jokers game, so we play that quite often.

Fourth of July was fairly quiet by the standards we had been used to. It was much busier around town, which we found when we went grocery shopping in Buena Vista. I laughingly say the traffic was so bad around here, we actually had to wait for two or three cars to go by before we could exit the campground....compare that to waiting 15-20 minutes at times back in the Hamptons for traffic at busy intersections! Its all relative, right?

We had a site-decorating contest for the holiday, and judging took place Wednesday night just around dusk. Al took the cart out, and rustled up a couple of "impartial judges", that is, campers who hadn't decorated and had no relatives in the park :-). They were very serious in their deliberations, and carefully tabulated the results. The winning sites are shown below!

First place went to a family that were tent camping...pretty awesome display since they didn't have electricity to string up lights with. Lots of red, white and blue there. There winning site got them two tickets to Mount Princeton Hot Springs...way to go!

Second place was an RV site in the lower campground...I really like the quilted wall hanging in red, white and blue...hmm, maybe a project to think about??

Third place was another RV site...well done to all our winners!

We've been on a couple of hikes on our days off, but no pictures. It was pretty warm, and my camera is pretty heavy, so I just decided to not carry it. I have selected and received a light weight point and shoot, the Nikon CoolPix L810. It feels so light! So I'm testing this out, and will let you know the results. I'm pretty spoiled with the quality of photos from my Nikon D50, however. 

Well, that's about all the excitement around here for now. I'll get my wildflower excursion posted soon. We really enjoyed the town of Crested Butte, and the area. I took a lot of pictures :-). Sunday afternoon we have off, and we're going to head to the rodeo grounds in Buena Vista for the 91st Annual Collegiate Peaks Rodeo...see what that's all about. I'm also making plans for the end of the month to take a drive over to Ouray, with a stop at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park on the way there. We've rented a four-wheel jeep for a day in Ouray, and plan to try some off-roading. That should be fun...and yes, I've picked the easy trails to start with! We've received our commitment from Express Employment for the sugarbeet harvest, so we will definitely have a new experience in October to write about! We are set for returning to Campbellsville to Amazon as well, so I have a feeling we'll be quite ready to relax in Florida after Christmas :-). Although we do have plans to "vacation" at Fort Wilderness with family at the end of January, and we are really looking forward to that...who doesn't have a great time at Disney, especially with family? 

Grand Lake and The Colorado River Headwaters

After our day in Rocky Mountain National Park, we had a cabin booked in the town of Grand Lake, just south of the southwest entrance to the park. I had figured instead of driving back through the park to go back to Estes Park, and then driving home the same way we went up, we would take our time, stay on the west side of the Rockies, and then drive back to Chalk Creek via the Colorado Headwaters Scenic Byway. 

Grand Lake was the neatest little town! After we checked into our cabin, the "Trout Cabin" at Columbine Cabins, (yes, it was all decorated in a trout-fishing decor...the property is actually up for sale, just under one million from what I saw in the real estate listings, if any one's looking :-) ), we headed into town to find a pizza for dinner. It was the neatest town we'd seen to that point. I felt like I was walking onto the set of an old western movie. There was the main drag through the center of town, with all the shops and restaurants lined up on either side, with the wooden boardwalk running the length of the street on either side. 

Along the main business district

The bakery/breakfast shop we had breakfast at...delicious!

Behind Main Street was the lake, and all the associated business that go with it...marinas, fishing, ice cream shops :-)! Grand Lake is the largest natural lake in Colorado.

Beautiful mountains ring the eastern side

Boats lined up for summer boating fun

I've never seen such sparkly peddle boats before

Colorado's state flower, the blue columbine, was blooming everywhere

After poking around Grand Lake for a little while after breakfast, we piled back in the truck to head back to Chalk Creek, via the Colorado Headwaters Scenic Byway. I should have realized, when I couldn't find very much information about this particular scenic drive, that it wasn't going to be as awesome as all of our other drives have been. First, I had been a bit apprehensive when I read that the section through the gorge would be "a bit rough". Well, I'm here to tell you that it was a piece of cake compared to some of the dirt roads we've been on around here ;-).

 

This is Lake Granby Reservoir, on the Colorado River. The actual Headwaters of the Colorado River is Grand Lake. The Colorado-Big Thompson project, constructed between 1938 and 1957, collects west slope  mountain water from the Colorado River headwaters, and diverts it to the Front Range and plains.

A wildlife/bird refuge along the way. Unfortunately, with the pups, we were not allowed to stroll around on the trails through the refuge, only watch from afar with binoculars. But it was pretty.

A sign at an overlook in the Gore Canyon...I think its been used for target practice!

The Colorado River as it makes its way south-westward, towards the Grand Canyon. Its hard to come to grips with the fact that this ribbon of water carved the Grand Canyon!

Another view of the Colorado River

The scenic byway ends at an area called State Bridge, where there's a lodge and camping for boating and fishing enthusiasts.

From this point we jumped back on the highways, cruised through Vail (was not impressed...seemed way too expensive and pretentious to be real Colorado) and headed on home to Chalk Creek. Since then we've been working, doing some hiking, and its been hot! Not double digits like some of you have been suffering through, but hot for here. I've also been planning some new excursions, and continuing to explore the hiking trails in the area. I don't have too many pictures, though, as its been hot and we've been a bit tired after work, and my camera, while I love it, is rather on the heavy side. I have investigated smaller point and shoots for when we're hiking, and have ordered one to try out. We did recently go to the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival as a day trip, and that will be the next stop on the Phillips' "Tour de Colorado" :-). Have a great day, wherever you may be.