Exploring Colorado on I-70 and I-40

At the end of May we planned a little getaway to Breckenridge, CO and Oscar decided to run the Turquoise Lake half marathon in Leadville. We later learned that Emily and family would be coming through Colorado the evening before Oscar's run on their way to Utah, and Tyler was invited to a good friend's birthday party the same morning as Oscar's run. We changed our plans and decided to have Oscar head up a day early to get ready for his run while the kids and I stayed to see Emily's family and let Tyler attend his friend's party. 

After the party we picked Tyler up from Northgate then went up to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. The kids earned another Jr Ranger badge, we took a walk along the trails, and we went on the wildlife drive.

On our walk we made it to this lake and saw some prairie dogs on our way back. On the wildlife drive we saw some white tailed deer and a few bison, but I don't have any photos since I was driving.

We made it to Breckenridge that evening and settled into our hotel. It was nice, but it didn't have air conditioning. I didn't think this would be a problem since Breckenridge is in the mountains and cools down significantly at night, but the airflow in our room wasn't great. It took hours for our room to cool down each night, even when the outside air got down into the 30's. 

The next morning we took a little walk through town before going to church. We laughed at these dog signs. The first looks like it says "110 dogs on lawn" instead of "no dogs on lawn" and the other sign looks like the dog is pooping directly into the owner's pan, like he's scooping the poop straight out of its bum. 

After church we drove around Dillon reservoir.

We also went on a little hike to see some more pretty views.

Interestingly enough, I thought the best view came from standing on top of this picnic table. 

After visiting the reservoir we took a small hike to visit the Breckenridge Troll - Isak. We liked the troll signs.

We then took the kids back to the hotel to eat lunch and swim and sit in the hot tub. After getting back from our swim we let them play their tablets while Oscar and I took a stroll along the Riverwalk.

That evening we played the game "Summer Camp" we'd brought a long with us. I also took the kids to play in the hotel arcade.

The next morning we packed up, checked out, then walked down to the Mountaintop Children's Museum.

While the kids played I went on a nice long walk to check in with Amy and show her the Breckenridge troll.

On our drive back home, Allison and I saw a young moose and its mother crossing the road. It was too dark to be a baby, but it was definitely smaller than the mom.

We stopped off for a really tasty lunch at a cafe in Fairplay then continued our drive until we reached the Florrisant Fossil beds national monument.

On our walk around the stumps path, we saw a VERY fast colony of red ants.

The Florrisant Fossil beds are most famous for their prehistoric Redwood stumps. A volcano from millions of years ago preserved many fossils here and made for a better environment for Redwood trees to grow in than Redwood National Park is now.

We finished the day with the kids earning two more Jr Ranger badges - one for Florrisant Fossil beds and one Paleontology badge. Apparently the Paleo parks also have Paleontology badges.

We got home Monday night then we were back traveling through the mountains again the following Sunday. With it still being Spring and our having had quite a bit of rain recently, I wanted to see some waterfalls. Our first destination was Rifle Falls in Rifle, CO. We left home early and stopped to attend church at a ward in Aspen. I played the piano for their Relief Society then we changed clothes and continued on our way.

Rifle Falls is mind blowing! If you were just looking at it in pictures, you'd think it was a tropical waterfall. You don't have to hike to see it, but there is a loop trail that goes up and around it.

Oscar took photos of the kids and I all swallowing the waterfall

As you make your way around the falls, there are beautiful views and some small caves to explore.

Here's my sweet Allison on the valley lookout at the top of the falls.

There were more caves to explore on the other side of the falls. They could use a bit more signage up there, though, since there are other trails to take and it wasn't clear exactly where this looped around. We ended up walking about 10 minutes around some fishing ponds up there before finding where the rest of our trail was. 

Here's the lookout from when we made it back to the bottom of the falls.

We drove by the beautiful Rifle Gap reservoir on our way out. We had about 2 and 1/2 more hours of driving to get to Dinosaur National Monument. When we visited the quarry in 2023, we hadn't known there was also scenic driving on the Colorado side, and we hadn't known about the Jr Ranger program. We figured it was worth another trip. 

We decided to do the Harper's Corner scenic drive that evening before heading to our hotel in Vernal, UT. Here are the views at the first lookout.

And the beautiful sights kept on coming! 

This drive crosses briefly into Utah, where we soon ran into Mormon Crickets. Growing up as a Latter Saint in Utah you're bound to hear the story of how crickets were destroying the pioneer's crops, but they prayed for deliverance, and God sent seagulls to eat the crickets. You can read more about it here. I thought it was so funny that these crickets seemed to know exactly where the border with Utah was and made sure to stay within or close to it. There were always plenty of crickets when we were on or within a couple minutes of the Utah side, but anytime we were well into the Colorado side, there were no crickets.

There were lots along our path to this lookout on the Utah side. Tyler and I were both very squeamish. Oscar and Allison were fine.

We escaped the crickets for the rest of our lookouts, though we weren't able to make the hike out to Harper's Corner. It was a mile walk out and we saw a storm with lightning and thunder was rolling in. You can see some of the storm clouds in these pictures. We'll have to return some other time since it's supposed to be the best lookout of them all. 

Our way back down we explored one final lookout that we'd driven past on our way up since it was on the other side of the road. The storm was much less threatening at the bottom of the road. We continued our drive in to Vernal, grabbed some dinner, and checked into our hotel.

The next morning we saw the quarry again and let the kids finish up their Jr Ranger books. Allison made some friends and shared all of her knowledge about dinosaurs with them. The kids all got sworn in together. For the paleontology badge, they let the kids hold fossils while they were sworn in. 

From there we continued driving to see more beautiful scenery and see some neat petroglyphs.

It was definitely beautiful, but so very hot. It was in the high 80s and sunny, which was a sharp contrast from the 60's and overcast we'd experienced in Breckenridge the week before.

We saw more cool petroglyphs, though the trail here was closed due to recent erosion. We couldn't get up close to some of the other ones.

Turtle Rock was pretty cool. The Turtle shape is unmistakable.

There's a cool canyon in the middle of the rock on the way out to Josie's Cabin.

On the way back we turned down a road we'd missed on our way up

We saw this lovely campground area then started our drive to Steamboat Springs.

Once we got to Steamboat Springs, our first stop was the Howler Alpine slide. It's closed on Tuesday, so we needed to make sure to do it Monday before they closed. We saw groundhogs in the rocks then the kids and I took the chairlift up while Oscar went to use the bathroom and put on sunscreen. He took videos of us coming down our first ride. 

Here we are riding the chairlift up to the slide. It was the kids first alpine slide ever and my first in Colorado.

Unfortunately the slide was just okay. It was difficult to push your lever forward and it slowed too much for those of us that are bigger. The kids didn't notice the slowdown, but Oscar and I did. 

We then checked into our gorgeous 2 bedroom resort at the Steamboat Grand. It would normally be $600+ for the night, but I was able to use RCI points to get it for MUCH less than that. We swam and went to the hot tub that evening, and Tyler worked on coding a Locust Pocus game (we'd originally thought the Mormon crickets were locusts). 

Oscar reheated some leftover pasta in the oven not knowing I'd put Allison's extra ranch packets inside the container. Somehow I hadn't envisioned that container going in the oven and hadn't thought it would be a problem. Imagine his surprise when he opened up his pasta to find melted plastic all over it...

The next morning the kids played on the big hammock and Oscar took pictures before we drove to Fish Creek Falls.

This was our main reason for coming to Steamboat Springs. It was a quick little hike to an amazing waterfall that could have easily passed for being in the Pacific Northwest. It was so green and lush! 

I didn't want to leave. I could have just stared at it all day.

But eventually we did have to go. We still had a long drive to State Forest State Park where we'd hoped to see moose. It's supposed to be the best place to go in Colorado if you want to see moose.

We didn't see any moose, though we saw several moose tracks, and Oscar and I saw a white tailed deer.

Fortunately the kids still had fun and earned another Jr Ranger badge. This was surprising since usually those are only at National Parks, not state parks. They have a cute visitor's center where Allison made some friends and pretended to be camping with them.

She took some photos with the Moose statue out front. 

We then continued our drive to our final destination - the LDS temple in Fort Collins. Oscar took Tyler in to do some baptisms for the dead while Allison and I grabbed dinner. After they were done we picked up dinner for them and I drove the rest of the way home. There was an interesting moon on the horizon just as we were pulling back into town.