2022 Fall Trip - Day 9/42 - 9/02/2022

Friday, Sept. 2, 2022 - Day One of 2 days hiking the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park:

I have already mentioned the National Geographic book Guide to Scenic Highways & Byways. It turns out that the route you see on the map above is in the book: "Colorado River Headwaters Byway":

It is a beautiful stretch of road, running through canyons and wide open spaces:

What a GREAT WAY TO START THE DAY!

They have a cool display at the Visitor Center:

Nice countryside:

At the trailhead at 11:12

I'll be doing The Loop today ("Green Mountain Trail", etc):

The trail starts out nice, but then you are wlking through the devastion that is the result of the October 2020 wildfires:

(Do you see the butterfly?)

Two miles later you are up at "Big Meadows":

Going around Big Meadows, I encountered signs when I wanted to take the right-trail up to Granite Falls:

Oh well - just keep going up the regular-left-trail. Which, by the way, is a very pretty trail:

After hiking 2 hours, right before Onahu Bridge I saw the side-trail up to Long Meadows:

So I took this trail, which seems unimproved/unmaintained:

Between scrambling over trees and ducking branches, I kept following some-sort-of-trail, until I popped out on a nice trail, so I turned right, and soon wound up right where I started, 20 minutes after I took the "turn-off":

I was getting confused, so I stuck with the main trail, which quickly took me to Onahu Bridge over Onahu Creek:

You can see I did a loop-de-loop:

(The "Onahu Bridge" text on the map is for the campground, not the actual bridge.)

It was lovely going back down Onahu Creek Trail, alongside Onahu Creek

At the bottom, the trail goes alongside meadows next to the main road:

I got back to the car at 3:03, after hiking 8.22 miles in 3:52. A Very Lovely Day!

On my way back to Kremmling, I was able to take pictures of Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain Lake, and Lake Granby - different lakes, but they all seem to run together as you drive along:

And of course I got to go over the Colorado River:

This was a good "stretch your legs" day, and a lovely hike - my elevation gain for today was 1,300 feet (as opposed to 2,700 feet for Thursday and 3,600 feet for Wednesday). THANK YOU GOD for another great Rocky-Mountain-National-Park Hiking/Adventure Day!

Music for today:

I finished the 2nd half of Paul Simon - Paul Simon 1964/1993, a 3-cd Box Set retrospective:

Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs, 2008 sixth album:

I listen to music the hotel rooms, when I write this stuff and plan adventures. Today I finished the 5-cd set:

various artists - Day of the Dead, 2016 a 3-cd set produced by The National:

wonderful Grateful Dead covers.

various artists - Stoned Immaculate: The Music Of The Doors, 2000 tribute album:

A Very Cool album. To quote Wikipedia: "Unusually, the surviving members of The Doors played on this tribute record. In addition, recordings of Jim Morrison were used posthumously, in the creation of some of the tracks."