This summer I will be guiding in Colorado. Instead of paying for housing I have opted to live in my truck. Yup. So my plan is to work my trips and spend my down time enjoying living outside with no electricity or running water for about 60 days and to squeeze as many 14ers in as possible. I will return to the front country a day before my next work trip to shower and prepare mentally for work. While in the front country I plan to post media rich blogs about my time, solo, in the wilderness. I aim to keep it light and fun. So here is my first Colorado blog, it covers travel to Vail and my first day in CO. I drove through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, pretty much the three most boring states in the country. When I finally made it to colorado I was greeted by the first traffic jam of the trip. I filmed interesting bits of the drive from Denver to Vail and strung them together at 800X speed. Just because.
I stayed at Beaver Creek Resort in Vail, which is as fancy as it sounds. Today I woke up at the crack of 11 and headed toward Leadville. My goal was to hike to Holy Cross City, an abandoned mining camp outside of Leadville, but the road was snowed out so I just wandered around in the snow for a couple of hours. Then I headed up to Homestake Reservoir and hiked around there. When I was done hiking I headed in to Leadville since I was right there. I have driven all over Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado, and thought it was all pretty, but the drive from Minturn to Leadville is one of, if not the, most beautiful drives I have ever made. A testament to this fact is that I hardly have any pictures because I was too busy just soaking it in.
On my way back to Minturn I passed through Red Cliff, which was a great little town crammed into a very narrow valley, not more than 1000 yards across at its widest part. I also passed Gilman CO, an abandoned mining town just off the highway, perched on an outcropping that drops 600 feet into the Eagle River. The mine was closed and the town was abandoned in 1984 after two large fish kills due to mine waste lead to an EPA investigation. It was left so quickly that there are still cars in some of the garages. I would really like to check it out but it is private property, and I heard in Red Cliff that the EPA takes trespassing on a Superfund Site very seriously.
This is a quick tour of my home for the summer. I apologize for the crap camera work
I start training for work in the morning so my next post will be on thursday! In the meantime thoughts, comments, concerns, or any advice on truck living and places to see and camp in Colorado?
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