Colorado Adventure 2009 | Day 1
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Today I set off to spend the next nine days exploring the backroads of Colorado. My original plan was to head out by myself, but it turned out that Amanda had a few vacation days she needed to take before the end of the month, so she ended up joining me for the first four days, and then again for the last two. Since she was with me for the first four days, we decided to make our base camp at Chalk Creek Campground in Nathrop. Our first day was spent driving from Grand Junction to Nathrop on a couple of different trails with a little pavement in between…which ended up taking most of the daylight hours, even with an early start to the day.
We started out by taking Kebler Pass over to Crested Butte. This is a nice easy road that offers some great views of the West Elk Mountains. I’ve driven this road a number of times, so we flew through it pretty quickly.
I did stop for an early morning photo
…and at the pass
After topping off my gas tank in Crested Butte, it was off to Taylor Park by way of the Reno Divide / Italian Creek trail.
Once we reached the Reno Divide (I opted to skip the ‘old’ Reno Divide section this trip and will save that for another time), we started our way down along Italian Creek towards Taylor Park.
To be continued…