Monday 9-15-25 Hiking Turtle Rock Trail, Camping & Reading

 

Camping at Vedauwoo Campground

 

Last night when I went to bed about 11:15 I was cold so I wore my sweat paints and socks to bed. When I woke the temperature was in the 40's and the Wave3 was running. I guess I didn't have to be all bundled up. Most of the time when I go to bed I'm cold but once I'm under the covers and next to Larry I get warm and comfortable. When the temperatures are in the 40's its perfect for sleeping.

I got up at 7:15 and made french toast sticks for breakfast. Afterwards we went on a hike. Today we hiked the Turtle Rock Loop Trail, which is 3 miles long. We started the hike from our campsite and walked to the East Trail Head. It was a beautiful trail, that took us through the forest of pines and aspens. We climbed in between boulders and over them. We climbed on big slabs of granite. We saw a few meadows. Some of the meadows had ponds and others the ponds were dry. Larry had read some people saw moose (cows and calves) while hiking the trail a month ago. The meadows looked like the perfect place to see them but we didn't see any. Most of the trail was easy. At places it was challenging because you had to climb up hill and in between the boulders. This made the hike fun. We saw a lot of beautiful rock formations. We saw the same rock formation on all of it's sides and it looked different. We stopped now and  then to look at the scenery. When we were about a mile from the end of the loop we met a group of mothers (4) hiking with their children and dogs. They babies in front of them, on their backs and holding hands. It was very nice to see them enjoying their hike. We also met a couple of couples. When we got to the trailhead we saw three people climbing Turtle Rock. After watching the climbers we took the trail to the Minnie. We had a super hike.

 

One of the ponds we saw

 

A little waterfall

 

Turtle Rock

 

A couple of climbers on Turtle Rock

  

When we got back to the Minnie we had hiked four miles, took us two hours. We were back by 10:30 we relaxed for a little bit. 

I wanted to finish reading Forever by Pete Hamil. I had a half hour left in the book. It was an excellent book about a man who lived forever and the wonderful changes  of New York City history. Then Larry chose another book for me. It is The Oceans and the Stars by Mark Helprin. 

After finishing the book I made soup for lunch. After lunch I took a couple hours nap. Larry went outside and read. It was a beautiful day with the high of 73 degrees. He said it didn't feel like it outside because there was a little breeze.

After dinner we went on another hike/walk for 1.33 miles. We started from the campground and took the trail from yesterday the Nautilus Loop Trail to its trailhead. Then we picked up a trail, that doesn't have a name. It took us to the entrance and to turtle rock trail. The trail weaved us around the boundaries of the campground. We hiked through trees and had beautiful view of Turtle Rock. The view was different from the views we had earlier because we were coming from a different direction. We hiked to a bench at the end of Turtle Rock Trail. While sitting on the bench a lady came by and asked if we had hiked Turtle Rock Trail. We said no. She was worried about an Asian lady she had seen earlier in the day hiking the trail and her vehicle was still in the parking lot. After resting we took Turtle Rock Trail back to the campground. We had another wonderful hike.   

 

             A pedestal rock

 

 By the end of the day I had done 14,200 steps. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing with a book.