i was all over the great state of Colorado over the last week or so.
couple days in denver with friends. it is hot as crap in denver and there are infinite breweries and decidedly no VQ content of note to share.
drove through Phantom Canyon road from Cripple Creek to Cañon City. it's an old mining railroad route with lots of cool views and tunnels and whatnot.
next we drove through Medano Pass primitive road, with the intent to camp in Great Sand Dunes NP. this is a 4x4 road and it has 9 creek crossings and some hairy rocky parts. pretty fun. anyway it took about 2 hours but when we got to the entrance to the NP, it was closed due to a torrential storm a few days before that made the road impassable. so we had to camp along the road, and then double back the next morning and go all the way around the park. there were literally zero other people encountered along the road, and crap tons of mosquitos everywhere. so we just car camped out of annoyance with mosquitos and fear of bears. this was at the top of the pass on the way out the next day:
next day we were planning on driving Cottonwood Pass (highest paved crossing of the continental divide) but it was also closed, so we took boring old Monarch Pass to Gunnison and camped at Taylor Reservoir that night. the campground hosts weren't there so it was free.
however some weird olds were running their super loud generator and sitting in their RV irl the entire time. like what are you even doing? idk
the main desty was Crested Butte, where we stayed with friends for a few days and colorado'd the F out of it.
rented a $6000 santa cruz for a couple days and mtb'd some world class trails. first time actually mtb'ing and i did pretty good!
SUP'd a few miles on the Slate river with el doggo (mt CB in the background)
coloradoans call this flower phenomenon a yellow bomb or some silly crap lmao:
hiked around 3 lakes (lost lake slough/lost/dollar) which was a nice easy hike with good views
thought of wacky when i saw this enormous shroom. did not not eat this one bc poison, etc.
all in all pretty fantastic time, albeit not quite as VQ-y as i maybe would have liked but still very great.
