2012/06 Western USA trip - Frying Pan Canyon |
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Monday June 25th
In the morning I couldn’t risk climbing the pass without a fill, so we drove down the hill to Winter Park, a well-known ski resort, to fill up with diesel. Colorado’s ski towns look much alike, all trying to make some money in the summer from other sports. We ground up the pass again, stopped briefly for the view, and dropped down towards Empire.
Rejoining I-70, we climbed up to 11000 feet again, then passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel, nearly two miles long, and drove past Vail and other ski towns. Eventually, as we lost altitude, we left most of the trees behind and the temperatures climbed again. I was hoping to get to the Maroon Bells, near Aspen, so we’d be leaving the freeway at Glenwood Springs.
This was a distant cliff face, cut by the Colorado River.
Glenwood Canyon was also carved by the Colorado River, the same river that we saw from Utah’s Dead Horse Point and at Nevada’s Lake Mead. The canyon is very scenic but somewhat spoiled by having a railroad and a double decker freeway going through it. Glenwood Springs was crowded with traffic but we found a laundry and by luck it was next to a school which had a good Internet signal. Next stop was at a Great Clips for haircuts,
It was time to find a campsite. The book showed a group of them on the other side of Basalt, at the Ruedi reservoir, beyond the Frying Pan canyon dam. We
went along the edge of Frying Pan Creek, a delightful drive, with the burbling creek and a green ribbon of trees between blazing red cliffs.
We opted for the Little Maud campground, with a view over the meadows and the reservoir and backing onto Ruedi Creek, a really nice
spot. There were deer wandering through the meadows and plenty of squirrels and chipmunks. We were going to stay two nights and use the spot as a base for visiting Maroon Bells.