We woke to clear skies and cool temps. Bob noticed that the ridges on the dunes this morning were very pronounced. We can’t say enough about how we love this view.
I had some business to take care of on the phone this morning that TOOK FOREVER! We were going to finish washing the front and other side of the bus before we left. but because I was on the phone so darn long, Bob ended up doing it by himself. The checkout time at the campground was 11:00, so we rushed to get everything closed up and the Jeep hooked up, but we were still late in getting out at 11:30. Oh well, nobody came to chase us out. We traveled on east Highway 160–The Navajo Trail.
Traffic was light on the highway through the mountains.
It was a slow, steady climb up to La Veta Pass at an elevation of 9,413 ft.
The drive had some beautiful scenery of Blanca Peak (14,345 ft.) and West Spanish Peak (13,626 ft.)
Part of the highway was marked as scenic and scenic it was!
After about 60 miles at the town of Walsenbury, we turned north on Main St. at Highway 25 to fuel up. From there, we picked up I-25 to Pueblo.
We were driving along the open front range where the winds were very gusty. That was a treat and I wasn’t even the one who was driving. It was wide open. We arrived at our campground at Pueblo Lake State Park around 2:30.
We checked in at the office and without a park map we had to fend for ourselves.
All the Colorado campgrounds have to be reserved online and when we made our reservations Bob picked a pull-through site with a view of the lake.
It was site #248 in the Northern Prairie Campground. It was perfect!
The sites do not have water hookups, so we had to come with a full water tank of 100 gallons. That should be enough for our 5 day stay here, especially if we conserve water where we can. We needed the electrical hookup for our AC today as the temp rose to the high 90’s. There is no sewer hookup at the sites, but there is a dump station in the park, so we have conserve there also. It will be a test to see how we do in conservation and capacities while we are here for 5 days, but we should have no problems.
The state park has 3 areas of campgrounds with different amenities at each, but no water at any of them. We are in the Northern Prairies section. All the sites are large with very good spacing between sites. It’s the weekend so we expect the campground to fill up and the lake to be busy with boaters. We’ll check it out tomorrow. We were all set up and settled in by 3:00. We had cocktails before dinner and relaxed in the AC. Even Auggie found it too hot to be outside for any length of time. We had dinner and waited for it to cool off before taking our evening walk. The sunset was beautiful and we can see it right outside our window. There was rain coming out of the clouds, but it wasn’t hitting the ground.
We have plans to visit Royal Gorge and the Pueblo Riverwalk during our time here. We may search out some 4WD trails in the area. With 5 days here we’ll have plenty of time to check everything out.
I did not know there were sand dunes in western U. S. Iām traveling vicariously!š
I didn’t know there was such a place as this until my sister-in-law who lives in Denver told me. White Sand Dunes National Park in New Mexico is another place like this.
I didn’t know there was such a place as this until my sister-in-law who lives in Denver told me. White Sands National Park in New Mexico is another place like this.