July 23, 2026

We were going to go camping later this week again, but there have been storms each afternoon.  Praise the Lord!  They have pretty much knocked down the forest fires that were all around us.  We've received a half inch of rain this week.  We have also gotten a bit of break from the nonstop heat.  But, it's supposedly headed back beginning tomorrow.  Bummer.  Joann's sciatica is doing much better and she can ride more now.  So, we headed up to Crested Butte.  It had been quite some time since we'd been there.  We stopped in Gunnison at Gene Taylors.  It was partly cloudy and not hot at all in Crested Butte.  We walked the whole Elk Avenue and went in a couple shops.  There sure are a lot of strange people up there.  After leaving the zoo of town we turned off at South Crested Butte and headed up Cement Creek.  It was really crowded up there too.  We only went to the campground and turned around.  We then took the Jack's Cabin Cutoff over to the Taylor River and headed up Spring Creek.  Again - lots of people.  It was surprisingly dusty up there.  In fact it was so powdery it was obvious it hadn't rained up there at all in these recent storms.  After going over the pass an hitting the Taylor Park road we were following a downpour.  It was so cool and smelled so fresh and not dusty...it was fantastic...especially since the road was crawling with motorcycles, atv's and side by sides.  There were hundreds of RV's all over the place.  What a place to camp - no peace at all - constant drone of motors.  That's not my idea at all of basking in the quiet of nature.  We stopped at the cafe at Taylor Park hoping to get another great hamburger and bacon cheese curds like last time.  It has new owners now and nothing was the same.  Very blah and yet expensive.  We won't stop there again.  It was a fun day - way too many people, but that's the new normal in Colorado unfortunately.

The Collegiate Range