North Park

Monday, August 14. Denver Creek Campground in the Arapaho National Forest, CO, to Walden, CO.

Camping at nearly 9000 feet makes for a cold night; in retrospect, perhaps I should have closed the vent when I woke up in the middle of the night because I was too cold. When we got up, the temps had to be in the low 40's, so we ended up putting on several layers each.

We paced ourselves up the 9.5-mile climb to Willow Creek Pass, taking a few breaks to shed layers as we warmed up. Just as we reached the point where we could see the pass, we noticed a cyclist gaining on us; this would turn out to be Roger, a local cyclist who lives in Granby, who happily took our picture in front of the sign indicating the Continental Divide (our second crossing) while he waited for his cycling companion Jim to finish the ascent. We talked with them for a while as we put our layers back on for the descent; turns out they do this climb FOR FUN. Roger had to turn around and head back to Granby, but Jim was going down the other side like us before coming back. He wanted to climb Willow Creek Pass TWICE. Once from EACH DIRECTION. FOR FUN. We wondered later when we would reach the point when we wanted to climb mountain passes for fun. We are still wondering.

We hoped to find a restaurant in Rand, and did -- but it was closed. We went to the Rand Store instead, which had some of everything. Snacks, books, apparel, windchimes, tchotchkes of all kinds. We ate a snack there and rested a bit before heading off on our way to Walden. We were just a few miles out when we saw Jim coming the other direction. He must have passed us while we were in Rand and then turned around up the road. We don't know how far he went, but at first we thought he had gone all the way to Walden before turning around, but later we realized that he couldn't have gone that far. Still, he was burning up the road compared to us.

The descent from the pass took us through more beautiful forest before spitting us out onto a wide valley, so suddenly that it took us both off guard. It reminded us both of the scenes we saw in Kansas, except for the mountains in the distance. Once again the vegetation was the dry, sagey variety, and even the occasional hayfields eventually disappeared. By the time we reached the Arapahoe Wildlife Refuge, the landscape had achieved a veritable desert-like appearance.

The wind built gradually until, after we had turned more northwards, it was a genuinely imposing headwind at nearly 20 mph. We had to stop almost within sight of Walden just to eat something, because the effort we needed to fight forward against the wind was so great.

We rolled in to the first motel we saw, the North Park Inn and Suites, which is currently under construction but still open. Although the AC doesn't work yet (it's not wired), we opened the windows and the door to get some circulation. The room has a shower, though, which is something we haven't seen in a few days, so we were happy to use it (and I suspect that made other people happy, too).

Walden is the Moose-viewing capitol of Colorado, we are informed. We have not seen any LIVE moose yet, but there is a moose on nearly every sign in town and a large stuffed moose outside the nice restaurant in town, the Moose Creek Restaurant. Inside, there are at least two moose heads on the walls, and chandeliers made from moose antlers. Looks like they do more than "view" moose here.

We will cross into Wyoming tomorrow on a route that includes just one small town in 50 miles, so we are packing some snacks for the trip. The next day will be a short one to Saratoga, where we hope to find a library to upload some pictures. If we don't find one there, then we might find one in Rawlins. Hopefully, we'll have some recent pictures up soon. More tomorrow!