Camping At Snowblind

 FINALLY we got to go camping and roaming the trails!  Somehow this summer just seemed to slip away from us and we didn't get to do much so we were both excited to head out!

We decided to just stay at a lovely forest service campground on the other side of Monarch Pass - it's in a perfect spot for us to ATV a few trails and we know the host of the campground from a couple years back!  I was totally surprised when we went over Monarch Pass to discover the leaves aren't really changing at all yet!!!!!!  Oh my!!!!  Our fall trip is next week to see the leaves!

We've had very cool nights the past few weeks but the days are still pretty warm - one never knows what kind of a fall we're going to have and I've always booked our fall trip for the 3rd week of Sept!  Usually on the western slope, the leaves turn earlier so I'm hoping!

Anyway, we got set up and headed out for a nice afternoon ride!

As you can tell, it was pretty hazy - we're still getting a lot of smoke from the western fires!

We had a lovely evening with a campfire and yummy roasted marshmallows!  I'm not sure where these marshmallows came from as they're in a plastic bag and not the original package but they puffed up like crazy!!  I was amazed!

We headed out the next morning for our "long" day of ATVing - it was beautiful out!  And yes, there's still a bit of snow on the top of that mountain!  

As we were heading towards Pitkin, we were amazed to see that one of our favorite camping spots (which is ALWAYS taken) was empty!  SCORE!!  We pulled in there and had our lunch by the stream!

This is the nearby tree with the face carved into it!  Always a favorite!

And someone has made this makeshift bridge across the stream!  I tested it out and it works fine - although I did hang on!

The stream there is running nicely!

Our plan for the afternoon was to come back down Tomichi Pass - we haven't done that pass in the last couple of years because it's been closed due to a death on the trail.  It was a LONG, bumpy, rocky trail to get up and down that pass - it's beautiful though!

And once we finally got down, we looked at each other and said the same thing - no more!  Take that pass off our list!!  Just too rocky and bumpy for us anymore!

I enjoyed walking around the campground morning and evening - we were the only ones on our side and there were only 2 campers on the other side!  It's nice to have the place almost to yourself!  The stream there is so pretty and in our spot you could hear the creek running!

Another campfire - nice and peaceful!

And one more stream picture!

We packed up the next morning and parked right outside of Sargents - there was a trail there that Glenn always wanted to do so that was our morning excursion!  The trail was fantastic - a couple of very steep parts but for the most part, very nice!  There are a lot of aspens between the 2 trails we did and we are definitely planning on either stopping there on the way home from our fall trip or heading over there the next week for a day and running that trail again to see the aspens!