Union Park Trail

Good morning, my friends! It's a cold morning here in Colorado. We awakened to 28°F temperatures this morning. The sky is clear and the sun is shining, and so it's going to be another beautiful day. We had gorgeous weather yesterday. As I mentioned, we were shrouded in fog in the earlier part of the day. Actually, I think a cloud had settled over us. When it burned off, it was blue sky and nothing but sunshine. Beautiful.

The kitties are put out at the invasion of Woofies and Mans. Here, they discussed the deterioration of the neighborhood. 

We tried to get Smitty out for a walk later in the afternoon, but it was just too scary. A man we couldn't see was talking on his cell phone, and we knew he was plotting Smitty's murder. We wanted none of that.

As we packed up for our ride, I couldn't resist taking another picture of this little Wyoming ground squirrel. He's pretty brave hanging out so close to us. My guess is he's looking for a handout.

Same goes for these guys. There is a group of four of them that hang pretty close together. Maybe they are siblings.

The mountains were pretty as the cloud cover left us.

Mike was chatting with the next door neighbor as I was walking around taking pictures. I can never get over how beautiful it is here.

When we took off on our ride, we took a leg off the Union Park Trail. We've ridden the trail before, but this portion was new to us. It wasn't particularly interesting since we were riding on a logging road with trees on both sides of us. That's okay for a while, but then it gets boring. I found myself planning next week's menu in my mind until we came to this viewpoint.
 

Realizing the trail ahead would be more of the same, we turned around at this point and headed in the other direction. As we descended the hill, I paused to take a picture of some of the areas that are currently being logged. Don't worry...there are lots of trees here.

We came across a few cows on our way back. These two were here with eight of their friends.

At the bottom of the hill, we entered an extensive meadow and pasture where we found more cows grazing.

Looking right, that's one of the mountains we see from the RV park. The denuded strips you see are areas where avalanches have taken out all the trees.

Riding on, we came to a working cattle ranch. This structure is the cowboy bunkhouse. It was built in the 1860's era. Since then, it has been upgraded with vinyl windows, but still no indoor plumbing as the outhouse at the rear would indicate. You can see it on the right side of the image below.

Looking in the other direction, we could see cows grazing on the far side of the pasture.

We made some friends as we passed through the gate, which we closed behind us.

There was another gate to pass through. I took advantage of the pause in riding to shoot this photo of a large rock outcropping that looks completely out of place with the rest of the landscape. You only see half of it in the image below. Also, I love a split rail fence.

Heading uphill, we came to these beaver ponds.

I zoomed in a little so you could get a better look at their dams.

Looking farther right...

Looking even farther right...

We turned around from there. For scale, I took this photo of the cowboy bunkhouse across the pasture.

As we passed through the first of two gates. this pine squirrel was not the least bit afraid of us. I walked within just a couple of feet of him, and he just kept snacking on his grass. They look almost identical to a chipmunk, but chipmunks have white stripes on their faces.

He was so charming, I took a second photo of his better side.

And then, we headed on back to the RV. That's Mike ahead of me.

We had a nice restful afternoon back at the RV. We had some lunch, and we both took naps. And then, I had plenty of time to finish off the first of 12 Kittens.

I don't have an iron with me, so I can only show you the wrinkly version. Finishing this block was my goal for September's

and so I'll try to remember to link up there at month's end.

Looking out the window this morning, our ATV's have a frosty coating.

Mike brought in the hose last night in anticipation of freezing temperatures. It has warmed up to 30°F. Still pretty nippy out there. I've started some laundry. It is our last day here, and I wanted to take advantage of the nice laundry facility here. Who knows what I'll find down the road? Not me, that's for sure. 

I won't be blogging in the morning since we're going to try to get out of here at the butt crack of dawn. We want to try to get through the road construction before it gets shut down to one lane only. We were delayed 35 minutes on the way up here, but it could be even longer than that. The website says to expect delays of up to 1-2 hours. Yikes! So, okay, an early start. We'll get breakfast at the first town we come to. There's always a possibility I'll write tomorrow's post today, in which case, you'll hear from me twice today.

Okay, my laundry timer is going off, and so must I. Next stop: Moab. Hoping for good internet and/or cell signal there.