Day 65 - Breckenridge, George Town & Brainard Lake Recreation Area, CO

We left Eleven Mile State Park and headed up State Highway 9 to Breckenridge. We are both huge  ski fans but we have only skied in the US once and that was at the Snowbowl in Arizona. We have always wanted to come back and do some more skiing in the US but with so many resorts to choose from, we have never been able to decide on where. We decided to try to see some of the resorts on this trip to help us make our mind up. 

We loved Breckenridge. We turned up and headed to the high street where we found a lovely bar / restaurant to sit outside and enjoy the mountain air. There seemed to be so much to do in Breckenridge, the high street went on and on filled with so many different shops, bars and restaurants. We loved the river that cuts through the town and imagine in the winter it must be really pretty with icicles. We picked up a ski map and were impressed with the number of runs and how a number of them come all the way down the mountain and into the town, we are not fans of walking in our ski boots! The only downside is that there are more blue runs than black diamond, maybe its more of a warm up resort before heading off to another resort for a leg burning session?!

After spending a couple of hours in Breckenridge and even driving up towards some of the ski lifts and mountainside resorts, we headed back on the road and picked up Interstate 70.

Normally interstates are boring roads which we try to avoid but 70 is the most scenic Interstate in the country, the views are breathtaking and it is the first (and probably the last) Interstate we truly enjoyed driving along.

We stopped off at Georgetown for a break and to swap drivers. Georgetown is a lovely historic town with a small town feel. The first thing we noticed coming into the town was the old fashioned steam railway that runs between Georgetown and Silver Plume. We walked up and down the main street, stopping off in a brewery so that Lee could sample some of the local beers and then we had an ice cream.

We then headed on State Highway 119 towards our final destination for the night, Estes Park. Before reaching our destination, we had one more stop off at Brainard Recreation Area. Our National Parks Pass gave us free entry although paying for entry still would have been worth it. This park is set in a glacially-carved valley with stunning lakes that are easily accessible, exactly what we needed after a long days driving. We did the short hike to Long Lake down a really easy trail, I was wearing flip-flops rather than hiking boots, that's how easy it was! The difficulty was getting to the waters edge which did require climbing over some rocks. We then drove to Brainard Lake where we could park right next to the edge of the lake and easily walk to the waters edge. Both lakes were really quiet and aside from us two, there were only a couple of other hikers, most of whom where doing much more strenuous hikes all the way around the lake rather than the easy ones we had chosen to do. 

We stayed the night at Estes Park Campground at Mary's Lake, a lovely campground with good showers, swimming pool, campstore and laundry facilities. The campsite was packed, every single site was taken and the overflow area was crammed! We had a really nice spot close to the toilets and showers but not too close to any other people. You'll see in the video that we had some guests visit our campsite, one even stayed for dinner. But maybe we were the ones intruding on their home! 

Lee Special - Michelada

Chef Lee attempts to recreate the Michelado [sic] that he had in San Antonio:

Lee Special - What Time Is Love, Arizona?

Ensuring we have an accurate view of the current time is important to us, as we need to plan our itinerary (such as shopping and checking in) pretty closely. When traveling between two of the four main US timezones, this can be challenging, but Arizona is a whole new ballgame.

For the uninitiated, the story goes like this:

• Arizona is in the Mountain timezone, 7 hours behind GMT
  
• the state doesn't observe daylight savings time, so it is the same time all year round and in summer it is the same time as it is in the Pacific timezone to the west
  
• the exception to this is in the Navajo Nation reservation in the north east of the state, which does observe daylight savings
  
• the further exception is in the Hopi reservation, which lies completely inside Navajo Nation, and which doesn't observe daylight savings

Confused? We were!

Apparently the decision for Arizona to not observe daylight savings, essentially opting out of the 1966 Uniform Time Act, was largely due to the costs associated with keeping people cool during the extra hour of daylight in this super-hot state.

Day 64 - Lake Fork, The Continental Divide, Salida & Eleven Mile State Park, CO

We packed up camp at Black Canyon and headed further into the Rocky Mountains. Camping at Black Canyon had been the coldest night in the tent we had experienced so far on the trip. I'm sure we'll be wishing for a cold night when we're camping in the desert in Nevada! Lee took a picture of me sleeping all wrapped up. I think I'm going to need a thicker sleeping bag by the time we get up to Yellowstone!

My morning didn't start off very well today. Whilst making breakfast, a bowl of strawberry juice fell on me and I walked around the campsite looking like I'd been involved in a stabbing. There were no showers at the campsite, so after wet wiping off as much as I could and changing clothes, we headed off to hopefully a place with a shower! 

The drive was very picturesque through the mountains. We enjoyed spotting the tell-tell signs of a ski resort (the runs down the mountains with no trees) and taking in the clean mountain air.

Our first stop was at Lake Fork, a gorgeous lake run by the National Parks Service. We had a little walk around the lake and just took time taking in the amazing view.

We then continued on our drive, initially following the river that flowed into the lake and then moving back into the mountains with more hairpin turns on the edge of the mountains!

Our next stop was the Continental Divide. I had no idea what this was but Lee started to get very excited as we turned up to the sign and soon explained that it was something to do with the direction water drained. Regardless of what it was, I had a really good time going up the bubble lift on the divide to the top of the mountain and looking out over the views.

We stopped off in the town of Salida for some lunch. We found a pizza place called Amicas who did the most amazing freshly made pizzas and a really yummy Peanut Butter Mousse cake. We enjoyed the funky vibe, friendly staff, great food and the local beers.

Salida was a really cool find too. The town is located in the middle of the state, right in the 'Heart of the Rockies'. The main street was full of shops, bars, coffee shops and restaurants, a number of them displaying or selling art and antiques. The Arkansas river runs through the town and had we had a little longer to spare, we might have joined the people in the river taking a dip.

Lee even managed to find a little spot for one of our stickers!

Before leaving Salida, we headed to Soulcraft Brewery, one of the local breweries whose beers we tried in Amicas.

We had planned to pick up a couple of growlers to drink whilst we were camping in the Rockies but after sampling a lot of the beers brewed by Soulcraft and having a lot of good conversation and laughs with the staff and the other customers, we decided to stay for a beer. It was a shame we weren't staying in Salida as we could have stayed all evening but we needed to get back on the road and head towards our campsite for the night.

Our campsite for the night was at Eleven Mile State Park, near the shore of Eleven Mile Reservoir. The site was very secluded with very few other campers which was a good thing since there was very little around to give you any privacy!

The notes we made on this campsite made it sound well developed with a lot of facilities including showers, a snack bar, a shop and flushing toilets. When we arrived, we quickly realised that our notes were not very accurate. There were showers but you had to drive to them and there was a fee, not too much of a problem until I tried to have my shower and the water went really cold just after I had put shampoo in my hair. It was the quickest I have ever rinsed off shampoo! The snack bar / shop was actually in the marina and was really a fishing shop selling a few other bits on the side and whilst there were flushing toilets with the showers, if you needed to go in the night, there was one vault toilet a walk away but it was shared with the entire campsite and the day use people. Not ideal in the morning when you're desperate to go!

Although the campsite wasn't what we expected, it was in a beautiful location and without any storms, we managed to have a night without the fly. This meant we could look up at the stars from our beds which were amazing due to the little light pollution in this area.