Colorado Camping

The drive from Kansas to Rifle Gap State Park, CO was ever changing.  We began in the flat of Kansas, with corn fields, cow pastures, oil rigs, and windmills.  Brooke thought that counting windmills would help pass the time.  She played a similar game hiking in Crete when she was about six.  Along the trip we estimate having seen 1,478 windmills.  At one point Lynn was driving, I was navigating, and Brooke was counting.  We came up over a hill and Lynn and I burst out laughing.  We were looking upon an endless sea of windmills!!!  Brooke said, "Well, better start counting!" as Lynn and I cried, we were laughing so hard!

After leaving Denver the scenery began to change drastically!  We were heading up into the snow covered mountains.  The road became very windy, yet cars continued to whip along.  Brooke had me text Brian to alert him to be sure he drove this stretch when they headed this way tomorrow.  If others drove they would be safe, but Brian's mental health would suffer.  As we drove along, the girls snapped pictures left and right.  Around every turn a new snow covered mountain appeared.  Coming down the other side was equally interesting.  We passed Glenwood Springs and reflected upon two past trips with the girls.  We were tempted to stop at the hot springs pool but continued on to Rifle Gap.

Rifle Gap State Park was about 10 miles off I-70, up in a pass.  The campground was on a reservoir, which was very pretty.  There was a swimming "beach" on the reservoir but none of us could talk ourselves into going in.  The water was murky, reminding us of Moreau Lake, and it just wasn't hot enough.  It was a very small reservoir and boats were allowed to go on it.  It reminded us of people going back and forth along the Hudson, but with about half the distance.

We did decide to drive up to Rifle Falls State Park to take the short hike to the falls.  It didn't take us long, hiking on a trial lined with picnic tables, to get to the falls.  The falls were beautiful but unfortunately when we got there a group was posing for pictures.  As we stood there waiting to take our pictures, two members of the group started to make their ways into the base of the falls to pose for pictures with thumbs up.  To our amazement, they continued to climb higher among the falls to get a "better picture."  We wondered how far up they were willing to go.  Well... they kept going higher.  Lynn, Brooke and I couldn't watch anymore so we began to walk away.  We turned around to see if Jeff was coming but he was standing there, like watching a Nascar race, waiting for the "crash."
The camping was great though, and the camp host was super nice!