Friday June 10
There is SO MUCH land out here!! It’s amazing!! So many of the vistas we have seen are incredible!!
We left Eric and Jennie’s Thursday morning, after another great walk around the neighborhood with the 2 of the 3 dogs – Dillon won’t do much more than the backyard! Always a great time with E&J…wish we could hang out more often!! The drive to Steamboat was about 2 1/2 hours…but we stopped a few times to enjoy the scenery and we were looking for future boondocking sites – there are so many out here! We had lunch in a beautiful spot north of Silverton that even had clean not smelly pit toilets for campers – always a bonus!!
I’d never been to this part of CO so was very surprised how different the landscape was. We drove in on Hwy 40 and when you cross the Rabbit Ears Pass the view is incredible!! You are overlooking a gorgeous valley with houses, ranches and water way below. There are some highly desirable camp spots overlooking the valley just off the road. Looked like people almost “lived” there. The free view they have is unbelievable! We checked into our Homexchange condo, right at the base of Steamboat Mountain and then walked around the resort to check it all out. They are making lots of changes so there was tons of construction going on and not many people around. I read that they were bought by Vail in April and when done with all the improvements, Steamboat will be the 2nd largest resort in CO – Vail is the largest.
Downtown Steamboat is only about 2-3 miles from the resort and we needed groceries so we headed into town. The river going thru town was running really high due to late snow and recent rain. We watched some guys surfing on the river – looked really hard and cold!! Only one of them could actually stand up for more than a few seconds.
We ate dinner on an awesome rooftop patio Mexican restaurant overlooking the main street. We were relieved because the first place we stopped said no dogs!! 🙁 Vaqueros had fantastic food and Mexican beer is always good!
This morning, we went for a great hike near the top of the pass. Tried to hike the Rabbit Ears – a volcanic rock structure – but couldn’t find the trailhead so decided to do Windy Peak instead. Found some amazing boondocking sites on the way to this trailhead! Very private and a nice view of a small valley and creek. The hike was about 6 miles and had about 600 feet of elevation…was fun and again beautiful! We hiked over some huge snowdrifts…weird to be in shorts and falling into snow up to your knees! We saw deer and elk plus signs of moose. For the 2nd time on this trip, we flushed a grouse and it scared the bejeezes out of me. I am actually a little nervous about my reaction – is a blood curdling scream too much? :-/
When I checked in, they told me about a bike/walking trail that starts near the resort and goes 7 miles thru downtown. It follows the river and was amazing!
