Monday, May 28, 2007

Colorado State Forest

This weekend we took Kelly camping in the Colorado State Forest. The park is just west of the Never Summer Range, seen in the distance, and located near North Park, near the Wyoming border. Back on the front range near Denver, summer is just starting to edge out spring, but over North Park, spring was just thinking about starting.

The state forest is well known as the Moose viewing capital of Colorado. Moose have wandered into Colorado occasionally, but there was no breeding population until animals were introduced to North Park from Utah and Wyoming in 1978 and 1979. They can now be found through out the state.

We never saw any during our visit, but we saw plenty of signs that they were around.

We camped the weekend in the state park camp ground. The facilities were minimal, but very nice. Our tent site was right next to a lake. The days were cool and nights even colder, so insect life wasn't a concern. The campground was full for the holiday weekend, but it didn't seem crowded.

Kelly didn't sleep much of the first night, with all the new sounds and smells of the wild to keep her attention. The next morning we were awakened by a dog ready to go.

Our first breakfast was a cold one. The low the night before was in the high teens.

Yummm duck for breakfast!

The flowers were just starting to bloom. This one was quite unusual. Its called a Pasque and opened when the sun came out from behind the clouds. The rest were just too small to photograph with my little pocket camera.

The forests are middle aged second growth - there was a lot of clear cutting here in the 1970's. The trees were pretty healthy, but a few were tagged to be cut because of beetle infestation.

We found beaver dam's all over the place, producing shallow lakes that the Moose liked.

Kelly hiking with one of her humans.


Kelly catching some ZZZZ's under the mid-day sun.

Between being up all night and having a busy day, the little dog was too tired to beg for food at dinner. We fixed her bed, but she chose ours instead.



Little dog had a tiring weekend and immediately started catching up when we got back home.

1 comment:

Miz Antropia said...

Boulder is beautiful!
I had a black doggie for 15 years... I almost cry reading your blog.