Creede

Got in a traffic jam today, just as we entered town. A fishing guide, pulling a drift boat on a trailer, had pulled his truck alongside another truck to roll down the window and talk.

We had to drive around.

Creede

Creede downtown. Yes, it is rush hour. That's the client on the right, the theatre.

Last week we had a three mile commute (round trip) from the campground to the client in Grand Lake. This week, more driving, we have a ten mile round trip.

Creede

The town of Grand Lake is named after the largest natural lake in Colorado, Grand Lake. The lake is fed by the Grand River, except it’s not called the Grand River anymore, they renamed it the Colorado River. I guess they could have followed it downstream, renaming everything else too, but decided not to. Grand Lake, Grand County, Grand Junction, Grand Mesa, Grand Canyon.

From Grand Lake to Creede, a 300 mile mountain day. From Northern Colorado, right down the middle, to Southern Colorado. From the headwaters of the Colorado, past the headwaters of the Arkansas, to the headwaters of the Rio Grande. A river Day. Only one high mountain pass, Fremont, 11,200, right before Leadville. Pretty much all downhill from there, except for Poncha Pass into the San Luis Valley, but that’s not even 10,000 feet high.

Creede. What a place. It looks like a movie set. Not just the town, everything.

Newsflash!

We got through an entire click-it-or-ticket weekend; a three hundred mile drive; without a single traffic violation; not a single unrestrained wife.

Grand lake

From the second floor window of the administrative office of the repertory theatre in Grand Lake, I look out the window to the alley across the street where we played catch with the football at the first family reunion back in 1985. As I recall, Joanie was hucking it and we were taking turns going deep. Leatherwood was the name of the lodge. Grand Lake is still Grand Lake.

Grand lake

Our camp.

Grand lake

I shouldn’t like the Steamboat RV Park as much as I do. It’s an old KOA; probably doesn’t meet their standards anymore. It’s a funky place. Lot’s of old rigs with people living in them as “affordable” housing. Back-to-back sites. Basically, a trailer park.

But boy is it loaded with birds… and trees… and flowers. The Yampa River flows right through it, with an old bridge across the river to tent camping sites on the other side. I can make a circuitous walk following every road and every loop that takes about half an hour to do one lap.

But that’s it for Steamboat. There is a repertory theatre in Grand Lake that needs attention. We worked at the coach in the morning, left by eleven, had lunch at the top of Rabbit Ears Pass (our third time over that pass in the last ten days), drove down to Kremmling, and followed the Colorado River northeast to Grand Lake, the western portal to Rocky Mountain National Park. We’re high here, 8,500 feet, and rugged. The RV Park has streams all through it, and sites cut into the willows and forest. It’s like a forest service park, (which we have generally sized ourselves out of), but we can fit here, and it has full hookups! What a fun place to be. Our first walk outside the coach, we found ourselves within ten feet of a yearling moose, standing on the other side of a willow, munching his way through the bush towards us.

Hummingbirds, juncos, moose, a red fox crossed the trail within three feet of me. Yes. This is where we want to be.