Colorado Mountains

The next part of our adventure was a small loop through the northwest part of Colorado. Our first night we found a town run campground in Rangely, Colorado that was basically empty and a nice spot to camp for the night. The town had a free outdoor museum, which we took advantage of and a stocked trout pond for kids behind the campground where Harper caught a trout.

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Our next stop was in Rifle. The campground just outside of the town was called Rifle Gap State Park and our campsite was high on the side of a hill with amazing views of the lake. From the park we day tripped to Rifle Falls and Harvey Gap. Rifle falls has a nice hiking trail that goes up over the falls and Harvey Gap has stunning emerald blue water where we stopped for a picnic lunch and did some kayaking.

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Our next spot was Stagecoach State Park. We had a campsite right on the water, which was perfect to launch the kayaks and for fishing and catching crayfish and minnows from the site. We did a bike ride around the lake on a fairly challenging trail which was about 16 km long. The girls were not very happy with my decision to try the trail by the time we were done.

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Pearl Lake State Park was a very secluded campground in the mountains of Colorado. From our campsite we saw a Bald Eagle flying overhead with a trout in his claws. We rented some paddleboards and the girls gave paddleboarding a try.

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We had planned to stay three nights at Yampa River State Park, but the park was quite small and after building wood/bark boats and sending them down the river and hiking the short trail in the park we ran out of things to do in this park. The park staff told us about another park down the road and let us move our booking to Elkhead Reservoir State Park for the remaining two nights.

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At Elkhead we had the perfect spot to celebrate Piper’s 9th birthday. We set up the hammocks on the site and she convinced Trevor to sleep in the hammocks overnight. Since we only have two hammocks Harper and I opted for the comfortable, warm RV beds 😀. We swam at the beach and biked around the trails in the park,, watching Pronghorn Antelope and Mule Deer leap around the campground.

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After our loop through Colorado, we headed to Bear Lake for a few nights of relaxing. Bear lake straddles the state line between Utah and Idaho and the water is turquoise like the Caribbean. We camped on the Idaho side of the stateline and ended up with a site right on the beach. The weather was hot and we spent our days swimming and enjoying campfires on the beach.

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