Month: July 2024

We left our campsite and drove into the mountains. Breathtaking views, the photos don’t begin to show the beauty of this drive. We stopped at the Continental Divide at Berthoud Pass.

The campsite at Meadows Campground in the National Forest is huge. Very rustic in that there is no water or electrical hookup, but that’s not a problem for us. Jeff just charges the camper battery during the day with the solar panels and we filled the water tank before we left the previous campground. We also have a tiny bathroom in the camper so don’t have to deal with smelly outhouses.

There are huge subalpine spruce and Lodgepole pines all around us, lots of birds, and LOTS of mosquitoes. Something else is up here that I must be allergic to, because I had a big allergy attack the whole evening.

I took some extra allergy meds and went to bed early. I didn’t sleep well and woke up with a fever of 100.6. Uh oh! Was it Covid? Will our trip get cut short? I usually just get it as a bad cold, but Jeff gets it a lot worse than I do and he is the one who is driving and does most of the camper chores.

Jeff went into town in the morning to get me more tissues and also a Covid test and some Orange Juice. The test result was negative!! Hurray! Our trip can go on mostly as planned. I did sleep most of the afternoon after going in to Steamboat Springs town to eat lunch. We were going to go on a big hike, but decided to just lay low in the shade at the campsite.

Jeff went skiing at Steamboat a bunch of times with his family while growing up so we did drive around a little so he could take some pictures of the mountain in the summertime.

We did make one adjustment to our trip. Our next camping site was going to be at Wind River Gorge. We were already debating switching to a hotel because it is going to be 100 degrees there. Plus we are all want to take showers. So we canceled that campsite and got a hotel in Thermopolis.

After 2 long days of driving and a day of overstimulation, we just relaxed at the campsite for the day. All the weekend people left so there were no campers on either side of us by mid-day. Carson and I went to the Nature center and then I hiked around a bit. I brought out my real camera and got some nature pictures of the native flowers and the prairie dogs. Prairie dogs are the perfect models. They just sit there and bark at you while you take their photos.

Jeff set up his solar panels and charged the camper and all our electronics and then he took a walk over to the dam that keeps the reservoir full of water. He took some pictures above and below the dam as he stood in the spillway. They have gotten more rain here than last year but have no worries about flooding or anything.

Late afternoon, some storms suddenly went through around us, but all we got was some big wind gusts and a few sprinkles. The rangers put up the red flag to signal that all the paddle boarders need to get to shore. Most of them had already done so and the ranger boat picked up a few stragglers that were struggling to paddle against the wind.

It cleared up so we had steak for dinner and enjoyed one last sunset.

When I woke up the last morning at this campsite and came back from the restroom building, a coyote walked right across the empty campsites in front of me hunting for rabbits (which were everywhere). Cool!

Enjoy the photos!