Pagosa Springs, Colorodo

September 17, 2022

San Juan National Forest.

Within a couple of hours drive, we moved from a busy gravel parking lot in Durango to a quiet forested location just outside of Pagosa Springs.

Some pastoral scenery along the way

The trip was not without a little bit of drama. The free dump station we intended to use (at a local RV dealership) was closed on Mondays, so we had to scramble a bit. Fortunately, we found a dump station on the way to Pagosa Springs.

A little more drama followed as we were setting up camp. Since we chose a dispersed camping area where the roads were on the sketchy side and we didn't know what kind of camping options would be available, we decided to park the truck and trailer at a trailhead parking lot and scout out campsites with our bikes.  We found a site a few miles down the road that looked pretty good, had a fair amount of maneuvering space, had no low hanging branches, and was set back a bit from the road.  Julie stayed at the site while Rick went to get the camper.

The site was deceptively sloped front to back, and it required many Lynx levelers (Lego-type blocks you stack on the ground) to raise the nose of the camper enough so that it was level. After Rick unhooked the camper, Julie looked more closely at the stack of levelers supporting the tongue jack and thought they looked kind of like the leaning tower of Pisa.  It wasn't really that bad, but then again rain was in the forecast, and the last thing we wanted was for our trailer tongue to slide off the stack and drop to the ground.

So, Rick re-hooked the trailer to the truck, and we started over by leveling the Lynx levelers better so that the stack didn't lean. We finally managed to level the trailer, but only after extending the tongue jack all the way to its 18" maximum travel.  In fact, the tongue jack hit the end of travel and made a really nasty noise just as the leveling system was telling us that the camper was level.  There was really no height to spare! Hopefully, we didn't break the jack--we'll find out when we pack up in a few days.

Our lovely site in the forest

A better view than the last campsite we had in Durango!

A little flower hitched a ride!

After setting up (twice), we had some lunch and took off on our bikes to ride some of the nearby gravel roads. It was a beautiful, warm Indian-summer kind of afternoon, and we rode a little over 15 miles.

The next day, we hung out at camp. We took a walk in the morning down the road for about 3 miles, and then sat out on the deck in the afternoon until the weather turned south. 

This bug landed on Julie's arm while we were sitting on the deck.  Whatever it was didn't seem to be very lively, as it just sat on the floor and allowed us to poke and prod it.

The next couple of days were cool and rainy (highs of upper 50s/low 60s). It came as a sudden realization that summer was ending and autumn was approaching. We spent these days running errands in town and hanging out in the camper under some blankets with some hot tea and making cookies.

There was a break in the rain for a short 1-mile stroll along the riverwalk in Pagosa Springs.

The Springs Resort was prominent along the river.

We had actually stayed at this resort with the kids about 15 years ago. There are several different hot tubs of differing temperatures to enjoy.

The menacing storm clouds caused us to cut our walk short.

The weather finally improved on Friday (mostly sunny and about 70), so it was time to do a hike along the Piedra River which we had been wanting to do.  It turned out to be a fairly level, 6.3 mile out-and-back hike with varied scenery.

The road to the trailhead was just gorgeous!

The mixture of sun and clouds made for some interesting lighting.

A little bit of fall color!

And Rick's photospheres from the hike - it was hard to narrow them down as there was such varied scenery!

After the hike, we went to Williams Creek Reservoir for lunch.  We just sat by the lake for a couple of hours and enjoyed the scenery.

On the way back to camp, we stopped at an overlook which looked down on the area we had hiked along the Piedra River.

Rick was standing near the edge of a very tall cliff here. Julie couldn't get quite that close to the edge!

Overlooking the beautiful river valley

Heading back to camp

Saturday was another nice day with lots of sunshine (with temperatures seasonally autumnal), so after breakfast we took off on our bikes to investigate other possible dispersed camping sites in the area, in case we return here some day.  It only took about 12 miles for us to cover all the gravel roads that we would be willing to take our camper down. We found a couple more sites that would be nice (one was a premium site that was large, level, and a nice gravel road to get to it), but none of the other sites was likely to have as good of internet as the one we were at.  That seems to be the choice in dispersed camping -- really nice scenic/remote site with no internet, or ok site with internet. Actually, there is a third kind of site--really nice scenic/remote occupied site with internet.

Next stop New Mexico!

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