Tuesday 9-7 No Internet - Driving to Gunnison National Forest

Most of the time we have no cell signal but this morning (9-9-2021) we had just enough to post this update, it is a couple of days old. Not enough signal to upload any photos so this post is only text. Really just wanted to let folks know we are fine.

Tuesday 9-7 Driving to Gunnison National Forest

Before leaving Aspen Ridge RV Park I took a few pictures and Larry wrote a review of the park on Google. We had a great stay.

Our next destination was 156 miles away in the Gunnison National Forest at Lottis Creek Campground. We drove two lane highways through Creede, Lake City and Gunnison. Creede and Lake City are very small and mainly survive on tourism, they have shops and restaurants. Originally Creede was an old mining town. Gunnison is larger and while its main focus is tourism it also has a large base of full time people and folks from the surrounding areas that support it. As we drove we saw a lot of rolling hills, ranches with cattle and horses, nice rock formations and a mountain river that ran along the highway at places. People were standing in the river fly fishing and some of them had special boats that can handle rocks and didn’t need a lot of water. We went through a couple of mountain passes, that had nice rock formations. One of the passes we saw sheep, they weren’t big horn sheep but it was a surprise. We drove in and out of the Rio Grande National Forest and the Gunnison National Forest.

We got to Gunnison at 12:30 and the traffic was very busy. We needed a few grocery items so we stopped at Walmart only to discovery it was very small and not a Super Walmart, we had to go next door to City Market to get all the items we wanted. After putting the groceries away we had lunch.

After lunch we headed towards our destination but we decided to go a little out of our way and go to Crested Brutte and Mountain Crested Brutte, about 30 miles down the road.

Decades ago we flew into Gunnison and took a shuttle up to Mountain Crested Butte to snow ski. We also drove up one time to ski. At that time if you stayed on the mountain at the beginning of the season you could ski for free. When they stopped the free skiing we started flying to Salt Lake City, Utah, to ski. It was warmer and the snow was better. Today we drove through Crested Butte to Mountain Crested Butte. It is no longer a quaint little ski resort with a few hotels and a couple of restaurants. Now its a city. After driving around we went back to Crested Butte where I took a couple of pictures of cool sculptures (a knight and a dragon). There were other sculptures in front of another building but we didn’t stop because the traffic was bad. As we drove around both Mountain Crested Butte and Crested Butte we saw people riding bicycles, walking and shopping. We didn’t drive through the downtown, too many people and too much traffic for the Minnie.

Next, we went back to Gunnison where we filled the Minnie with gas and then it was about 30 miles down two lane highways to the campground. The Gunnison River ran along side the highway which made it a beautiful drive. As we drove we passed a few campgrounds but we like to stay at campgrounds that have hiking trails. Some of the campgrounds are on the river and are very nice.

We arrived at Lottis Creek Campground around 3:00. It has two loops (Baldy and Union). We decided to stay in Baldy because it had more trees and looked nicer. Larry thought the sites were first come first serve but a lot of them were reserved. As we drove around we didn’t see any place to pay for the site but there were camp hosts. We stopped by the camp host for our loop and asked her (Cathy), she said she would be around to collect the fee at 4:00. He asked her about the sites that were reserved. Cathy said that all the sites are going to be first come first serve on the 13^th. We found a site we liked and set up the Minnie for three nights. The sites have power but no water. The restrooms are pit toilets and there is a water spicket for the campers use.

After dinner we walked about 3 miles. Larry thought if we walked across the road we could get to the river so that’s what we did. We walked through a gate that took you though an old campground. We walked around and took an old trail that was very over grown. We never could get close enough to get a good view of the river. We walked back across the road and went looking for the trailhead. It seemed to be a long way away. We crossed over a creek via a bridge but we did not find a trail. We saw a gentleman and his wife camped nearby so Larry asked him about the trail. He said they also had a difficult time locating the trail. He told us to continue down the road and there will be a sign. You have to cross the creek via logs. He recommended you have hiking poles because they didn’t and it was difficult. We found two crossings but both require using logs to get across the creek. We also walked part of another trail down a wash with a lot of big rocks you had to walk on. We decided we’ll probably do the trail that goes over the creek tomorrow. It was nice to figure out the trail early. Then we went back to the campground.

Later I walked around the two loops for an hour and 15 minutes. I was going to go longer but it was getting dark. I ended up doing 26,000 steps for the day. I’m not sure what place I came in in my group because we had no internet. We had a super day.