State Forest State Park, Colorado

Just headed a couple of hours away from home this weekend, but to a part of Colorado where we haven't spent much time. State Forest State Park is HUGE:  71,000 acres! It has several campgrounds, and we stayed at the Ranger Lakes Campground. Here's our campsite (#113). Can you see what's wrong?

Yup, you're right. The electric box and the picnic table/fire pit are on the wrong sides! There's no reason for this that we could see other than a wonky design. Throughout the campground, there are sites that are correctly laid out and some that aren't. There are also some that, if you are going the right way on the one way loop, would be exceedingly difficult to back into given what would be an acute angle. Fortunately, we did not have that problem. The campground is small, and it has clearly been affected by the pine beetle problem. Stumps are everywhere. At one time this was probably a nicely wooded campground. Now it is open with small trees planted and just starting to grow.

We did some geocaching in the area and visited the Moose Visitor Center. The rangers were super helpful, even giving us a list of geocaches. My signal booster on my cell phone provided us with a lot more using the geocaching app, though. Supposedly, this is the moose sighting capital of Colorado, but we didn't see any moose while we were there. There is plenty of hiking in the area, although at this time of year there is still snow on many of the trails. There's a trail right next to the campground that goes around the lakes and shows how stunningly beautiful the area is!

One of the other campgrounds in the area, Michigan Lake, is also very beautiful, although again the deforestation was so sad. The lake is very low right now, perhaps because there is a big dam project going on in the area. But if you can look past the negatives, there are some amazing views of the huge snowcapped mountains peeking up from behind the lower level (still over 9000 feet in altitude) areas you are standing upon.

 

At night, we had a great meal with herb marinated beef kabobs and a pearl couscous salad (bonus: steak and eggs for breakfast in the morning); played LED bocce, a game that we saw being played at night by others last weekend and had to buy!; had a fire and popped jiffy pop, even though it says not to do it over an open flame; and, of course, read. We realize we are a bit self-congratulatory about it, but we don't have a TV in the camper and don't intend to get one. These quiet nights are the reason why!

 

All in all, it was a lovely relaxing weekend.