Tuesday - movin' on UP the road!

We decided to leave the "front range" and start our journey over the Rockies on Tuesday.

A couple of pictures of other campsites at Boulder County Fairgrounds first - I had not realized how wide our sites were...

But the sites in the other parts of the campground were a bit more crowded! Of course, we don't have slides, so that helps in our width requirements.

On Tuesday morning, we met friend Gleena for breakfast. Had a great time catching up with all that is going on with her family!

The Garmin thought that we should go over to I-25 to head north, but we decided to take US 287 - we went through a couple of towns - this was Loveland, CO. I prefer taking the US highways when we can... even though they can be a bit slower, they are less stressful, in my opinion.

Miss Kitty in her accustomed spot on Dwayne's lap while traveling.

We turned west on Colorado 14 and almost immediately started seeing beautiful views of mountains!

Mountains ahead of us...

... beside us, irrigated crop land...

... and some round hay bales.

The Cache la Poudre River was alongside the road almost constantly...

Can Miss Doozie fit in there? it says 14'5", and she is under 13', so should be fine!

We made frequent use of "slow moving vehicle" pull offs to avoid holding up other travelers.

We were climbing pretty steadily...

Enjoying the views...

I had done research ahead of time of what campgrounds there were in the National Forest in which we might fit, and had identified Dutch George Campground as a good choice (it was indicated as being good for larger RVs). When we got there, the sign indicated that sites were available. Hurrah!

The sign gave us the needed information, but the camp host, Robert, was right out to greet us and recommended a site (#15 - a pullthru) that he was sure we could fit into.

The campground was right along the river... and though Colorado Highway 14 was right there too, we really could not hear any sounds from it over the sound from the river. We were also down in elevation by 30' or so from the highway.

Many (most?) of the campgrounds in national parks and national forests are now operated by concessioners.

We fit in well, and had beautiful scenery all around us.

There's Miss Doozie in the distance. The toilet building is there on the left, and another camper (pop-up) on the right.

We walked over to the river - it was so nice to walk beside it and see it and hear it...

Or just to sit beside it!

There was an island in the stream just upstream from where we were...

The waters were making such a great rushing noise...

The path had been well maintained and was easy to walk on.

Across the river there was a wide meadow in the valley.

Some pretty flowers along the path...

This flower had a couple of butterflies on it...

zooming in you can kind of see the two butterflies!

More river pictures...

And more...

and I returned to the bench!

Down stream from us some fellows were trying their luck at fishing - they had caught two trout! (you can't see them in this picture, I just thought about it as I was captioning it!)

The rock formation/mountain at the east end of the campground...

This gives some perspective on its size (Dwayne is walking by the pickup camper).

The weather was so beautiful...

A jet contrail in the sky to the north of us...

More of the landscape north of us...

Miss Doozie is there in the middle - this is looking west from an unoccupied campsite.

There she is!

We went back out as the sun was setting to get pictures of the golden rays on the rocks.

Beautiful!

Unfortunately, we could not get any cell signal while at Dutch George campground. The camp host, Robert, said that he and his wife had gotten satellite service so they could have communication ability while working there this summer. We are rather dependent on having access to the internet... so, on Wednesday morning, we decided to continue heading further west.