Last Friday we took off for a couple days of camping before I headed back to Grand Junction for two more weeks of work. Pete bought a new tent for us while I was away working and had found a really pretty camping area near Big Meadow up on Wolf Creek Pass. It’s called Park Creek and is in the Rio Grande National Forest. The camp site sits along the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, which was running just behind our tent. The weather was perfect, and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. We spent a day relaxing at the camp site then we headed out for a scenic drive up to an old mining town called Summitville, which was just eighteen miles farther up the mountain from the camp site. It’s a ghost town, but a few of the old buildings are still standing. Summitville is at about 12,000 feet elevation, which makes for some incredible scenery. There are beautiful alpine flowers, deep green meadows, and awesome mountain vistas. The temperature was 84 degrees when we left the Park Creek camp ground and dropped to 46 degrees at Summitville, it was unbelievable. Just one more reason why the state’s tourism motto is “Colorado Wild”!
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August 7th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Oh I am so glad you guys took a break! It sounds incredible, and I am not the camping type, lol. But, breaks are necessary for the soul and the sanity – Tomas and I are planning on a break after he is finished with his current film – we want to drive to these caves we heard about, and we are planning it for Autumn, right when the leaves are turning.
Of course, my karma seems to be the old Yiddish saying – “You want to make God laugh? Make plans”.
I think it is so cool you guys found a ghost town – as far back as I can remember, I loved ghost towns.
Good for you guys! Make it a habit! Work is good, and necessary, but life is going pretty quick these days, and we should all be grabbing it with both hands.
My new Mantra – “There is Always Time for Fun.”
August 7th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Wow, just went to the link – amazing. What history! Were there many people around? I remember when I was a kid my dad and I took a trip up to Idaho, and we stopped in Nevada and found a ghost town, and we were thee only two people walking on the dirt street. it felt like time travel……..
August 12th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Just being outdoors in such a beautiful, quiet place is good for what ails you. The last time I was in your neck of the woods was over twelve years ago; it was Autumn and I remember how pretty it was to drive through the rolling hills of western PA and see all the leaves putting on their annual show. Having grown up in SoCal I wasn’t familiar with these things I now know to be “seasons”, so that is an experience that has stayed with me. When my mom visited CO in fall of 2007 I took her on a drive from Pagosa Springs to Ouray to see the fall color show, which was incredible. The Rocky Mountains are an exceptional background for the red, gold, and copper colored Aspen leaves, and the lush green meadows made the entire scene seem as though it was a page taken from a scenic coffee table book. It was absolutely breath taking, even for a back east girl like my mom. Our moving to CO was a fluke; however if I had known more about the state it would have been my first choice, so I feel quite fortunate to have wound up here.
August 12th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Summitville was quiet; there were a few others in the area, folks like us who were camping nearby and drove up for a look. Aside from the few remaining mining buildings there isn’t much up there. The mine is still under going reclamation, so there were a few workers and heavy equipment near the mine area but that was about it. We didn’t know anything about Summitville when we chose the campsite; just like our moving to CO it was a happy accident.