Moose, Mountain Goats, Mt Evans and Motor Campgrounds

Wednesday, July 9
We took it pretty easy on Wednesday, mostly hanging around the RV park.  We did drop the dirt road tandem and the mountain bike for a very short ride, but almost everything around Grand Lake was a big climb and we were saving our legs for Thursday.  So we had a marathon round of Catan (our favorite board game) with Nicholas getting back into his previous form of being the most frequent winner.

Thursday, July 10.... Mt Evans climb

There's a moose among us!

We were up early to make the 2 hour drive to Mt. Evans, but as I was going out to unhook the water and power, a neighbor in the campground excitedly told me there was a bull moose just 2 campsites over from us.  Seeing a bull moose has been on Beth's list of things to see for a while, so I ran back inside to get her.  The people with the campsite with the best view could have charged $10 a head and I don't think anybody would have blinked, but they were very nice and let us come take a closeup look at "Bullwinkle" in real life... that is quite a set of antlers he has!

Nicholas after climbing Mt Evans
(the RV is the white dot along the road at the left edge
of the picture... Beth is waving!)

The drive to Mt Evans took us through Winter Park ski area and then over the mountains to Idaho Springs on I-70.  The actual race up Mt Evans is July 19 and starts in Idaho Springs (elevation 7800'), so there were plenty of bikes out riding the 28+ miles.  We chose to ride from Echo Lake which is the mid-point of the total race climb.  From this point, you have 14.4 miles and 3500' of climbing to reach the summit at 14,100 ft above sea level.  I figured that since Nicholas has only been riding with us a few days and this is the highest altitude ride in the country, I would cut him slack.  I didn't need to worry about Nicholas... he was off and of out sight most of the time after the first mile.  He reached the summit in just a little over 1.5 hours, so roughly 10 mph up the climb.  He did get passed by a couple of local racers, so he got a little perspective as to how fast some people can make that climb.  But I am really impressed at how fast he climbs with very little saddle time, even at these high altitude.  Oh to be young and in great shape!

Before we left the top of Mt Evans, I had to get a few shots of the mountain goats that were grazing along side the road.  That's another animal that is on Beth's list, but there was no way she was driving the RV up the last 5 miles of twisting, narrow, poorly paved, no guard rail, road to see them.  They had barely let the her in the park with the RV in the first place and had literally measured the RV with a tape measure to make sure it was less than 30' long including the bikes (28', so no  problem).

Nicholas and I rode back down to the park entrance where we met up with Beth for some lunch and on to find a place to camp near Golden, CO.  Beth had called an RV park in Golden, but they didn't take reservations.  You had to call after 7AM to get your name on a list and then they would call you back after 11AM to tell you if you had a spot or not.  Unfortunately (or maybe not), we didn't get a spot there, but we did stumble across, Chief Hosa campground which is run by the City of Denver Parks.  This is the oldest RV campground in the country (or so they claim).  The park was opened to "motor" camping around 1913.  So I guess now we can strike that off the list.... "stay in the oldest RV park in the country".  (I'm not sure that was ever on the list, but we might as well take credit for it.)

We met Beth's sister, Barbara and husband, Jerry, who live in Boulder.  They drove down to meet us for pizza in Golden.  We had some catching up to do since their daughter, Maureen (Mo) is getting married next month and Jerry retired from GM last year and recently took a new job.  We had a good visit and then headed back to the campground.

Friday, July 11... an odd day
We didn't have a plan for Friday, but that isn't unusual for this trip.  We decided to make a run to Walmart and then head to Fairplay, CO, where we would drop the tandem and go for about a 30 mile ride.  When we got to Fairplay, there were thunderstorms all around, so we decided to just drive on toward Buena Vista, CO on highway 285.  We were within 8 miles of Buena Vista, when we hit a giant traffic backup.  I suspected that it was construction, but after sitting for several minutes, not moving and no traffic coming toward us, we decided it was more likely a wreck.  After sitting for quite a while, I hopped on my road bike and set off to find the front of the line.  Unfortunately there had been a fatal accident 3 miles up ahead.  Just as I reached the front of the line, they opened one lane of traffic to start to untangle the giant, Friday afternoon, heading for the mountains traffic jam.  Of course, all the way back I was accosted with questions.  I reported they had just opened up some traffic and their distance to the front of the line.  I felt a little like Paul Revere... The untangle took quite a while with only one lane of traffic open at a time.  Moving 20 cars at a time...

After spending more than 2 1/2 hours tied up in the traffic to go six miles and then hit construction (one lane bridge fix), we decided to find a campground near by.  When we finally got to a forest service campground, the host told us every spot in any campground nearby was fully booked for the weekend. As were we looping the campground to exit, he flagged us down and gave us directions to a BLM land area nearby that has free open camping in pull-offs along the road. We followed his directions and found a great spot just inside the BLM land.  So thanks to the campground host... they are usually a wealth of information and really nice folks.