Last Colorado Camping

Got air? We do. After four months living near sea level, we found the Colorado mountains were lacking in air. We felt the lack of oxygen as we hiked and tried to do our three-mile runs at 7500, 8000, 8800 feet above sea level. But here in Fruita, at less than 5000 feet, we found it easy to run. The problem here is the heat—it was 96 our first day in town.

We are staying at the James Robb-Colorado River State Park. It is one of Colorado’s newer state parks. The sites are long and paved, with level concrete pads in the center. We have full hook-ups and 50 amp service—really good in this heat. All this costs only $11 a night, Sunday through Thursday, with our 50% off Aspen Leaf Pass for residents 64 and older. What a great deal. We have a great view of the Colorado National Monument, just down the road.

We are about to end our month-long camping trip through southern Colorado. We spent five days at Ridgway State Park, one of our favorite spots in the state. This was our fifth stay there in the last nine years.

It is a great place for biking—we rode the Uncompahgre Trail into the town of Ridgway and also biked around the state park. Our hummingbird feeder has never been busier—the broad-trailed, ruby-throated and rufous hummingbirds are drinking over a cup of sugar syrup a day. It is such fun to watch them fighting each other for a spot at the feeder. Our cats are very frustrated with all the birds right outside the window and no way to get to them.

On Friday we found our 50th geocache and our first travel bug. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out www.geocaching.com round trip. By the end of the day, my pedometer had over 17,000 steps recordedto find out. We found it by biking five miles and hiking three miles . The pedometer is our way of maintaining our weight—10,000 steps every day, if possible.

For many years, we spent most of our time off camping in the Colorado mountains. For three of the years we lived in Grand County, we camped two nights almost every week of the summer in the nearby forest campgrounds. Since 2003, we have spent no time in these mountains because of our travels throughout North America. It has been very special to spend a month in Colorado in our RV this year.