Lake City Weekend

Mother Nature is giving us a late fall this year - in fact, the leaves around here are just turning and that's about 2 weeks later than normal. Perhaps we would hit peak weekend in Lake City?

6:00am came early on Friday morning but we were both excited to finish packing up the car and head out!! Bananas and muffins (coffee for Glenn) kept our stomachs from growling too loudly until we hit Gunnison!! I had remembered from last year that I had stopped in to get coffee at the place next door to the restaurant we usually eat at and realized they made crepes there for breakfast - so we headed in and ordered breakfast, along with a large cup of special coffee.

The coffee was fantastic - I had forgotten how much I enjoyed having it served in one of those huge white cups vs. a to go cup!! But disappointment hit as soon as I tasted the strawberry crepe I had ordered!! I never thought to ask if they used fresh strawberries - and trust me, I'll NEVER forget to ask again!! This fantastic light crepe was filled with strawberry preserves!! Now don't get me wrong, I love jelly!! But NOT in a crepe..............

Soon we were back on the road again - but I did forget to mention that going up Monarch Pass, the majority of the aspens were STILL green!! AHHHHHH!!! What if we got over there and none of the leaves were changed????

Outside of Lake City about 30 miles, we saw a bicyclist standing by the highway with his thumb out, holding up a bike - Glenn said we better stop - I begged to differ at that point because after all, this was a mini-vacation and I JUST wanted to get there!! But after stopping and seeing what was wrong, I realized how selfish my thoughts were and was thankful that Glenn DID stop!!

This guy (Seth) had major problems with his bike and the wheels wouldn't turn - he had tried to get someone to stop the evening before but NO one would stop - there was an old trailer right there at this little pullover and he broken in to spend the night so he wouldn't freeze!!! It had gotten down to about 20 degrees that night - BRRRRRRRR!!!

He said it must be an old hunting trailer and it looked like no one had been in there in years, except for the mice - yuck!!! But at least he stayed 1/2 way warm!! Glenn worked on the bike for a little while with what tools he had and did get the wheels to turn but it still wasn't working properly - Seth asked us if we would load the bike and take him into Lake City so of course we did!! Yes, it took some extra time but we were glad to help, especially when we stopped and realized he was handicapped. He had been in a bad motorcycle accident years ago and had hit his head hard enough to give him some brain damage - hence the bad limp and only partial use of his left arm and hand!!

After dropping Seth and his bike off at a gas station, we finally got cell phone service so Glenn had to make some calls and THEN go in search of a building site outside of town, hoping the homeowner might be around so he could talk to him about a granite job!! Were we EVER going to ride the ATV?????

We never did find the building site so we headed over to the staging area for ATV's and soon were on our way up Engineer Pass!!! No, we were NOT disappointed with the colors - they were awesome!!!


My favorite off the beaten track trail was the Nellie Creek Trail - the aspen trees on this particular stretch were just amazing!!

We had a nice lunch by a stream - our usual of cheese, sausage and crackers - grapes - BBQ pringles (they travel well in the pack) and snack candy bars for dessert, preferably snickers or peanut M & M's!!

After riding up and back on Engineer Pass, we loaded up the ATV and headed out to Castle Lakes to check into our cabin! We were both tired so Glenn napped and I read a while but soon headed to the lake to check out the picture situation - it was awesome!!!

The sun was just going down across the mountain of aspens - it was spectacular!!

Glenn grilled up some steaks for dinner along with some excellent sweet corn - I SHOULD have gotten a movie from the lodge as I had forgotten you can only get 1 channel - oh well, I was reading a good book anyway.......................to be cont'd