Steamboat Springs, Colorado

For the last few days we have been in a RV park in Breckenridge, Colorado and have been taking some side trips from here.

Yesterday we took a drive on a loop that took us north of here and way up in the mountains. It was beautiful, although a bit of an unnerving drive with lots of hairpin curves. I noticed the little car icon on my GPS was spinning around like a square dancer on steroids.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to record any of it. The twisty, wind-y highway went high, high up in the mountains to some small towns that seemed to be, if not at the top, at least very near the top of the world.

At one point I was driving when Don began yelling, "Stop!! stop!!!" just as a black bear came out of the woods and out onto the highway in front of us.

By the time I got the car stopped and my cell phone out, a pick-up truck stopped between us and the bear so I couldn't get his picture.

At that point the bear decided it was safer for him to head back into the woods. So no picture of a bear on today's blog. However, just so you know, when they are in the middle of the road, they look just like they do on TV...but I would have loved to have had his picture to show you.

We took off again today heading up to Steamboat Springs. I had never been there and it had been 30 or so years since Don had been there.

We went through a lot of ranch land, not so much the high rocky peaks that you normally expect from Colorado, but a drier, more rolling landscape.

As we approached the Steamboat Springs area, we crossed over Rabbit Ears Pass, which was rather appropriately named.

When we got close to Steamboat Springs, we dropped down into a valley with a large lake in it. There were mountains with ski slopes a bit further on as we got into town. The valley is quite an impressive view.

We had lunch at a little restaurant in town on the Yampa river. It overlooked not only the river with people floating in tubes, but on the opposite side, ski jumps where the Olympic athletes train. We were told that they produce most of the Gold Medal jumpers there in all the Winter Olympics.

We then paid our respects to various little shops in town, wandered through an open air art show, and then headed back to Breckenridge.

One of the things that is quite obvious in Colorado is the massive pine beetle kill that is going on in the pine trees. Trillions of pine are dead and brown.

There also seems to be some kind of a blight affecting many of the aspens, although not nearly to the same extent as the pine kill. Everywhere you look there are huge areas of brown pine trees. It is sad to see, but apparently is part of nature's cycle.

We saw it even worse two years ago in Canada when we were on our way to Alaska. The little town of Frisco, near Breckenridge even has a Beetle Fest in September.

I guess if you can't beat 'em, you might as well have fun with 'em.

Although this is still a very beautiful place, it will be many, many years before Colorado will be fully green once again.

Tomorrow we head north to Wyoming as we continue our trek toward Banff and Jasper.