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mistressofmuses) wrote2023-07-13 10:07 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-07-13 10:07 pm
Monday: Golden Gate Canyon State Park
So one of the cool things that Colorado has done is roll out an option during vehicle registration that allows you to pay an extra fee that purchases you a Colorado State Parks pass. It's less expensive than the regular annual pass, and you just show your registration when you enter the park. (My mom was kind enough to pay the fee for us as a gift, which was very sweet of her.)
We had to pick up our vehicle registration from her anyway, so on Sunday evening we stopped by... and decided to IMMEDIATELY put the pass to use on Monday, ha.
Our first park excursion was to Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which is a park we had not been to yet. It's up in the mountains, overlooks part of the Continental Divide, and sounded quite pretty.
We... maybe should have picked a slightly easier one to start with, ha. None of the trails within the park are rated lower than "moderate", which is typically within my tolerance level, but I am woefully out of shape. Still! It was a good time. We brought Bella along (though a real hike is beyond Cy's ability any more.) Bella did great!
When we came into the park, we went to the visitor center to check in. There's not always any super exciting info, but I always like to check in if I can and find out if there've been any interesting animal sightings or if there's trail info we should have, or things like that.
Nothing major this time, though there'd been a moose sighting the night before. (Though no mooses for us.)
A view of the continental divide. :)
A really beautiful columbine. Our state flower!
Even right by the visitor center there was a lot of neat stuff:
Ants on a log! I'm not sure if the scale is conveyed, but these ants were VERY BIG.
Sadly overexposed, but a neat green caterpillar!
(Unfortunately, we were being EATEN ALIVE by mosquitoes in the shade there.)
Also next to the visitor center: the trout pond!
Showing off several of our species of trout. Also, you can pay a quarter and get a handful of smelly fish food, which will set off a feeding frenzy, lol.
Another beautiful stand of columbines. (These are probably the nicest ones I remember ever seeing 'in the wild.')
We had a trail in mind to head to, but the ranger I spoke to seemed... skeptical of my choice, lol. She recommended one of the more popular trails, since it was an off-day, and often the trailhead is too crowded to even park at.
The road up through the park is STEEP. The poor little truck made it, though!
The trail the ranger had recommended starts around the most popular overlook, the one where you can see about 100 miles of the continental divide. (As seen above the cut.)
Another overlook picture.
And looking through the overlook binoculars.
We did start down the trail that started there... but didn't get terribly far before Alex decided we should turn back. He'd tweaked his knee a bit while picking Bella up earlier, and the angle we were walking down was hurting. I'd been told there was a meadow that the trail eventually led to, but we didn't get to anything meadow-ish, ha.
But we headed back, and then continued driving down the road toward the original trail I'd been interested in. That was near to where the moose had been sighted the previous night, and the trail allegedly passed near a couple historic buildings, which Alex and I were both interested in.
We headed down the trail...
Again, I feel like pictures don't quite capture it, but there were just SO MANY wildflowers. There were stands of them just everywhere. All the rain has given us the greenest, most flower-heavy year I remember ever having.
More flowers!
Interesting fungus on an aspen.
We headed down the path for a while... but it just sort of kept going. And it was all downhill, which was easy, but meant the way back would be all UPhill. We kept saying "when we get down to the bottom of this curve..." and there'd just be MORE CURVE.
There was a very pleasant creek running near the trail, so it sounded lovely and relaxed. And we saw a very small young garter snake! Also saw an ichneumon wasp in flight. (Failed to get pictures though.)
Eventually we did decide to turn back, even though we hadn't come across any of the historic buildings (likely just shacks, lol) that we'd hoped for, just because we knew it was going to be a climb back up, and we were getting low-ish on water.
The climb back up WAS a bit strenuous... even though I feel like it shouldn't have been. Then again, this WAS even higher altitude than our usual, and we HAVEN'T been on a real hike in months, and I AM really out of shape, so. Guess we just need to do more!
Everyone was tired when we got back to the car, definitely including Bella. She fell asleep hard in my lap for a bit. We'd been carefully monitoring her bad knees, but there was very little swelling, even after the pretty long uphill stretch! (And of course, the instant we got home she wanted to go-go-go play-play-play with Cy. So she sure wasn't THAT tired.)
And then when we got home, Bella wanted to sniff a crumpled up leaf on the ground out in front of the building. Alex was pulling her away so she wouldn't eat it when...
That's no leaf! It's a really neat sphinx moth!
I don't know why the poor thing was in the very middle of the sidewalk! It looked pretty "fresh", so hopefully it was just waiting to dry so it could fly off. I moved it to the planter as a hopefully safer spot.
We had to pick up our vehicle registration from her anyway, so on Sunday evening we stopped by... and decided to IMMEDIATELY put the pass to use on Monday, ha.
Our first park excursion was to Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which is a park we had not been to yet. It's up in the mountains, overlooks part of the Continental Divide, and sounded quite pretty.
We... maybe should have picked a slightly easier one to start with, ha. None of the trails within the park are rated lower than "moderate", which is typically within my tolerance level, but I am woefully out of shape. Still! It was a good time. We brought Bella along (though a real hike is beyond Cy's ability any more.) Bella did great!
When we came into the park, we went to the visitor center to check in. There's not always any super exciting info, but I always like to check in if I can and find out if there've been any interesting animal sightings or if there's trail info we should have, or things like that.
Nothing major this time, though there'd been a moose sighting the night before. (Though no mooses for us.)
A view of the continental divide. :)
A really beautiful columbine. Our state flower!
Even right by the visitor center there was a lot of neat stuff:
Ants on a log! I'm not sure if the scale is conveyed, but these ants were VERY BIG.
Sadly overexposed, but a neat green caterpillar!
(Unfortunately, we were being EATEN ALIVE by mosquitoes in the shade there.)
Also next to the visitor center: the trout pond!
Showing off several of our species of trout. Also, you can pay a quarter and get a handful of smelly fish food, which will set off a feeding frenzy, lol.
Another beautiful stand of columbines. (These are probably the nicest ones I remember ever seeing 'in the wild.')
We had a trail in mind to head to, but the ranger I spoke to seemed... skeptical of my choice, lol. She recommended one of the more popular trails, since it was an off-day, and often the trailhead is too crowded to even park at.
The road up through the park is STEEP. The poor little truck made it, though!
The trail the ranger had recommended starts around the most popular overlook, the one where you can see about 100 miles of the continental divide. (As seen above the cut.)
Another overlook picture.
And looking through the overlook binoculars.
We did start down the trail that started there... but didn't get terribly far before Alex decided we should turn back. He'd tweaked his knee a bit while picking Bella up earlier, and the angle we were walking down was hurting. I'd been told there was a meadow that the trail eventually led to, but we didn't get to anything meadow-ish, ha.
But we headed back, and then continued driving down the road toward the original trail I'd been interested in. That was near to where the moose had been sighted the previous night, and the trail allegedly passed near a couple historic buildings, which Alex and I were both interested in.
We headed down the trail...
Again, I feel like pictures don't quite capture it, but there were just SO MANY wildflowers. There were stands of them just everywhere. All the rain has given us the greenest, most flower-heavy year I remember ever having.
More flowers!
Interesting fungus on an aspen.
We headed down the path for a while... but it just sort of kept going. And it was all downhill, which was easy, but meant the way back would be all UPhill. We kept saying "when we get down to the bottom of this curve..." and there'd just be MORE CURVE.
There was a very pleasant creek running near the trail, so it sounded lovely and relaxed. And we saw a very small young garter snake! Also saw an ichneumon wasp in flight. (Failed to get pictures though.)
Eventually we did decide to turn back, even though we hadn't come across any of the historic buildings (likely just shacks, lol) that we'd hoped for, just because we knew it was going to be a climb back up, and we were getting low-ish on water.
The climb back up WAS a bit strenuous... even though I feel like it shouldn't have been. Then again, this WAS even higher altitude than our usual, and we HAVEN'T been on a real hike in months, and I AM really out of shape, so. Guess we just need to do more!
Everyone was tired when we got back to the car, definitely including Bella. She fell asleep hard in my lap for a bit. We'd been carefully monitoring her bad knees, but there was very little swelling, even after the pretty long uphill stretch! (And of course, the instant we got home she wanted to go-go-go play-play-play with Cy. So she sure wasn't THAT tired.)
And then when we got home, Bella wanted to sniff a crumpled up leaf on the ground out in front of the building. Alex was pulling her away so she wouldn't eat it when...
That's no leaf! It's a really neat sphinx moth!
I don't know why the poor thing was in the very middle of the sidewalk! It looked pretty "fresh", so hopefully it was just waiting to dry so it could fly off. I moved it to the planter as a hopefully safer spot.