Friday 9-2 Hiking Archuleta Trail

First off, The Internet. Our campground has very little cell signal, our cell phone is on Verizon and there is no Verizon. Our hotspot is on AT&T and while it has had a slow and spotty connection it has worked for the most part, Larry even setup our phone to work off of it. Now that the holiday weekend is here the campground has filled up and we seldom have any cell service. This makes doing my blog and tracking my step challenge very difficult and I can forget about my online solitaire games. The good news is at times we can still get some internet.

Let's go hiking

We woke up to another beautiful morning with the temperature in the 40s. Larry turned on the Wave 3 heater to take the chill away. Today we had pre-made frozen pancakes. Once the oven got to temperature I put the pancakes on the cast iron pizza pan and cooked them for 3 minutes. That was a mistake, the bottom of the pancakes came out hard. You couldn't cut the pancakes with a fork, you had to use a knife. I reread the directions, it said to either put the thawed pancakes on a cookie sheet or directly on the rack. Tomorrow I'll try one of the recommended ways. 

After breakfast we went on a 6.5 mile hike for over 5 hours. We started from our site and walked to the lake trail. We hiked the trail clockwise for 1.25 miles to the Archuleta Trail Wilderness sign. As we were hiking by the rock slide we saw a pika climbing on the rocks. Last year we saw one in the same area, apparently they live in the rock slide. When we got the Archuleta trail sign, we hiked it for 2 miles. We hiked up 700 ft in elevation. We stopped occasionally to rest and enjoy the gorgeous scenery. As we hiked we heard and saw a beautiful mountain creek running along side of the trail. We saw butterflies, bees and a lot of wildflowers. We met a guy and his Australian Shepard, that was wearing sunglasses. We got off the trail to let him pass. As he walked by we said our hellos. the trail took us through, over and around boulders, up the mountainside and across small creeks. As the creek flowed down the mountain it created small waterfalls. One place it made a deep pool of water. We saw trout hanging in the current of the creek. We were about .25 mile away from our destination when we met three people. We all said hi and we let them go ahead of us. When we got to our destination the three people were resting. We talked to them for a little bit. Then they started their hike down the mountain. We moved closer to the creek to get a better view. There was a beautiful formation and the creek formed a small waterfall as it came down the mountain. After resting we started our hike back to the Minnie. It was easier going back because it was mainly down the mountainside. We still had to watch our steps because there was loose gravel and rocks. There were a few places we had to climb up hill. When we got back to the Y we took the lake trail back to where we started. As we were hiking through the meadow we met a couple and visited with them. When we got back to the rock slide we saw the pika again. This time he was a lot closer. I tried to get a picture but I was too tired to focus. It was even posing for us. We gave up and continued to the Minnie. We got back around 2:00. We had a long challenging hike but it was a lot of fun. 

Pika

 

The meadow we hiked through

 

Deep water hole and waterfall

 

A butterfly and some of the wildflowers

 

The waterfall at the end of our hike

After resting I made sandwiches for lunch. Then I took an hour and a half nap. Larry read and took a short nap.

About 4:00 people started coming in for the long weekend. This kept us entertained. 

After dinner we had a short rain shower about 10 minutes. It was nice because it cooled things off.

In the evening I did an hour and 15 minute walk. I started walking around the campground to the old road gate. I stopped at the host site and visited with them a bit. I continued my walk. As I was walking by the couple with the lab mix I stopped and said hi to them and paid attention to the dog. Afterwards I continued to the old road. I hiked a mile of the road and turned around. When I got back to the gate I continued walking around the campground. By the time I got back to Larry I had walked about 4 miles. I ended up doing 28,000 steps for the day. I don't know where I was in my group because the internet has been up and down all day. I didn't do any of my games for the same reason.   

We had a super day.