Rained Out & Re-Routed

Yet again our plans changed spur of the moment. We thought we would spend Wednesday in Boulder, Thursday tour the Coors factory and Friday head east on I-70 through Kansas in route for St. Charles (just east of St. Louis) to visit some of my family. Mother Nature had other plans in mind… rain and snow. We ended up spending a very wet rainy day driving through Boulder only seeing the city from our van. Kyle offered to brave the rain with me to explore the town and I kindly rejected the offer, mostly because it was not only wet (and I mean crazy down pours), but cold! So after seeing as much as possible of Boulder by car we went looking for a camping spot. We headed towards a campground outside only 13 miles outside of Boulder, but up towards Rocky Mountain National Park. When we were still about 9 miles away (and headed steadily up in elevation) the rain turned to snow. The forecast did not show a stop in the rain for days. I was not worried we would get to the campground, but getting down off the mountain in the morning after it had snowed all night could be a problem for the van. Not the kind of situation I was trying to get ourselves into. So we turned around and headed back through Boulder towards another campground we had researched called Barr Lake. We hoped by going to lower elevation we would avoid the snow. We got past Boulder and on the outskirts of town we passed the county fairgrounds and their campground. We decided to take it as we had been driving around for hours and the rain was non-stop. The campground was like a swamp from the rain, and it didn’t stop raining all night. From the research we did there was rain forecast all through Colorado, Kansas & Missouri for the next week…. What to do? This rain is too much! Head South! Viva New Mexico!! We woke up early Thursday morning, were on the road by 6:30 and we made it to Trinidad (“We Saved the Best for Last”… ‘cause it’s the last town in Colorado) and camped at Trinidad Lake State Park. It was super windy, but no rain, and no snow (are we ever going to catch a break with the weather?)! We even got to fish for the second time this trip and the first time out of California! No fish bites, but we did see mountain lion tracks, a feeding frenzy swarm of sparrows, coyote calls in the night and little cotton tail bunnies. We’re dying to see some wild life!

This is how bad the wind was blowing!

Trinidad Lake at Sunset