Monday 9-8-25 Camping at Silver Lake & Hiking Meadow Fall Trail

 

Camping at Silver Lake

 

We woke up to a brisk morning with the temperature in the 30's. Larry got up at 6:00 and turned on the Wave3 heater. When I got up he said, that the temperature in the cab was 42 degrees and the coach itself was 44 degrees. When I finally got up it was 7:30 and the temperature had risen to 54 degrees. I'm glad we have the Wave3 heater.

I made cornbread for breakfast. I usually use a glass pan but today I decided to use a cast-iron skillet. Last night when I baked chocolate chips cookies they were a little crunchy. I cooked them at a lower temperature but I melted the butter instead of soften the butter. Tonight I'll bake some more but do them a little different. This morning I baked the cornbread at a lower temperature and the least amount of time the package called for. They came out terrific, they rose to the top of the skillet and were flaky. We ate half for the cornbread for breakfast and had the rest after our hike.

 

Cornbread breakfast and snack

 

After breakfast I put water in my pouch and got ready for our hike. Our hike was a 3.8 mile loop on Meadow Falls Trail. We started from the RV and hiked the road .10 mile to the trail. Then we climbed up a steep hill but there was no loose gravel. It got our hearts pumping. Once on top the trail leveled out. There were other climbs but not as steep. The trail took us through meadows and through the forest. We didn't see any wildlife. Not true we saw chipmunks, squirrels and a couple of pikas (at the end of the hike). Larry thinks we saw a couple of turkeys because of their tail weathers. I wasn't sure. We hiked to the trail sign for the Meadow Falls, about 1.5 miles in the hike. The trail to the falls was about 600 ft. The Meadow Falls wasn't big but it's the wrong time of the year. The falls was called Meadow Falls because it was fed from the meadows surrounding it. Once enjoying the fall we hiked back to the trail. This section took us up and down hills. Some of the hills were steep and we had to rest once in awhile to catch our breath, we are at a high elevation. The campground is at 10,230 ft. and we hiked up to 10,590 ft. We hiked by a few rock slides. When we got to them we looked for pikas because we remember they live in the rocks when we visited Big Meadow Campground by South Fork, CO. We had to cross the creek a few times. We used rocks to get across. We also saw a few mountain ponds. The last .5 of a mile was to the campground on Silver Lake trail. While hiking the shoreline of the lake we met up with a couple who were hiking the trail. The mas was not wearing a shirt or shoes, only shorts and she was all wrapped up like us. Larry asked him how he could hike with no shoes. The guy said you get use to it. We thought his was crazy because the trail has rocks, roots and trees and other growth that can poke you. I'm clumsy so you may fall. The last .20 mile to the campground is very steep. We had to rest a couple of times to catch our breath. By the time we finished our hike we had hiked for three hours and 3.8 miles.

 

Meadow Fall

 

Where we saw a couple of pikas

Pika from the internet

One of the ponds we saw

 

Walking of a creek via stepping stones

 

For lunch we had soup. For lunch dessert we had Great Value Fig Bars, which Shirley (Larry's ma) bought us for our birthdays. Thank you, Shirley.

 

Fig Bars

We spent the rest of the day relaxing. We read and I took a nap.

In order to get to the internet Larry has to setup the Starlink. So when we got back from the hike he set it up to do some research on where we're going from here. I can also do my blog. 

The weather today was sunshine, clouds and wind. Overall it was nice even though it was cool when the wind kicked in and the clouds rolled in. 

After dinner we went for a half mile walk. We walked part of the Meadow Fall Trail. We walked through one of the tent sites to the trail, where there was a meadow and a small pond. We wanted to see if we could see any wildlife. We didn't see any. We might have been there too early it was only 6:15. Then we took the trail back to where we started it this morning. Then we walked back to the Minnie. The Meadow Fall Trail is very nice and through out the trail they had Carins. Carins are trail markers with stacks of stones. The ones we saw were a post with slabs of granite piled up around it to keep it standing. The wind went down a bit and the sun came out so our walk wasn't cold. It was very nice.

By the end of the day I had done 13,500 steps. I did more than Larry but it's probably when I walk or hike I swing my arms and he doesn't. We had a super day.