Castle Lakes Campground and Cabins

Lake City - let me tell you how we first discovered this beautiful place! Back in the fall of 1988, our family took a trip from Tx. (where we lived at that time) to Colorado, knowing that we would be moving someday to the state! It was a camping trip and of course since I had been to Colorado numerous times with my family, I KNEW that I wanted to live there someday so we were checking out places! Somehow we ended up in Lake City - now "City" is certainly a relative term here since the population of this little town is under 400 people! Of course that number swells to a LOT more during the summer when the Texans invade this tiny place! It's a quiet, historical little village - and we all fell in love with it the moment we arrived! Not only is the scenery amazing, but the small town life would suit us perfectly!

Unfortunately, there is no work there as it's basically a tourist town - and there is a very small elementary school but middle and high schoolers would have to ride a bus over an hour to get to school! So of course, it was not a place where we could consider living, but it's sure a place we could come back to time and time again!

Back to our trip now - after our motorcycle ride, we headed out to the Castle Lakes Campground which we had discovered a couple years ago - it's about 9 miles out on Cinnamon Pass and the aspens along the way were sure pretty! We got checked into our cute little cabin, complete with kitchen and bathroom, ate a very late lunch and RESTED!

This is the hillside of aspens behind the campground - I'm standing on the opposite side of the lake taking this photo, although the actual print below does not do the hillside justice! It's really much more amazing to see it in person!

The place has 2 fishing lakes - so Glenn and I took a walk around the lake and I of course brought my camera to start snapping pictures!

I love the reflections of the mountains and the aspens on this lake!! One of my all time favorite photos is the one below, only the BETTER one that I took 2 years ago is blown up and framed, hanging on my wall at home! I was just not at the lake at the right time of day to capture what I wanted!

I think the picture below will become one of my favorites! No matter where you stand around this lake, there is some type of reflection in the water, whether it be the mountains or the aspen trees!

And this is the other hillside of aspens where once again you can see the different stages of fall! I love the moon in the corner of the picture - too bad it wasn't a full moon when we were there!

After a walk, a rest and a late grilled dinner, I turned on my new IPOD player (with MUCH thanks to Jaime and Robby for helping me learn how to download it!) and dug into the John Grisham book I was reading! A perfect end to a perfect day!!

To be continued.............