Colorado 2025
- otomola
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Thursday, October 16, 2025
I arrived at Cherry Creek State Park at 1PM, check-in time, though I did not plan that way exactly. I left Quad Cities on Friday, October 10. I had driven to a rest area near Council Bluffs, Iowa and stayed the night there. On Saturday I drove across some of Nebraska and spent the night at Love’s Truckstop in North Platte. On Sunday I drove to Cherry Creek. The only downside to the drive is that I-76 is a terrible road, the pavement in some sections is dreadfully bumpy.
Campsite #120 was level and spacious. It is a good sized park with a variety of vegetative habitats and a reservoir with a large dam. There is one good road to bike along with several others that are bumpy road and in need of repair. Fortunately, there are good bike trails. I was amazed at the network and connectivity of multi-use trails there and all around Denver. The bike trails provide some great scenery and panoramic views. There are nice grasslands and many tall Cottonwood trees throughout the park. The landscape has some rolling hills, but it seemed mostly flat. Riding a bike always alerts one to any degree of slope as it affects one’s efforts, reflected to breathing intensity and heartrate.
The park also had some issues. There was no soap in the bathroom, not even soap containers that needed to be filled. Two of the showers would not work with my credit card, and there’s no alternative way to pay with coins. I did not bother checking the other three, but one of them did work when I tried it the next day. The water spigots at the dump station are not marked, so one does not really know if they are fore drinking water. Generally, at campground dump stations faucets are clearly marked potable (drinking water) or non-potable (non-drinking). The non-potable can be used to rinse out a camper’s waste tanks. I called the park office to ask about this. Is there potable water available? The person I spoke with did not really know the situation. She told me the potable water had a blue cap on the faucet. There was no blue cap on either faucet.
The main reason I was in Denver was for appointments at Contravans (Monday) and Larry Miller Chrysler Dodge RAM Jeep (Tuesday). Contravans is where they did the interior work on the van, and I had regular service done at the Dodge dealers. On Wednesday I left the park at noon and drove to Greenwood Village Park on the other side of the dam. It was a beautiful park on a picture perfect day. I walked around the park perimeter trail three and a half times, having my lunch after the first loop. It is over a mile for each loop. The park was impressive with four full-sized soccer fields and five softball fields. There is also a frisbee gold course, a bicycle obstacle course, a playground, and a set of rock structure for bouldering (climbing practice). I left the park around 3:30 and headed to Corinne and Jason’s in Lakewood. They are from Danbury, and we used to work together at Chuck’s Steakhouse. They have a son in first grade and a cute little dog, living in a nice little one-story home on a quiet street. We drove to their son’s soccer practice. We picked up calzones and pizza on the way there. The kids were playing excitedly.
On Thursday morning I drove on I-70 to Colorado National Monument (CNM). The west entrance is just outside of Fruita. I had been reading there was a lot of construction taking place near Idaho Springs and there was potential for significant times when traffic was stopped and the road was closed for blasting. They are going to widen the road in some places, and the only way to do it is to remove a lot of rock. It was interesting to see the work environment. I avoided any traffic stops, smooth going all the way.
I-70 has several notable attractions. It crosses the Continental Divide though the Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel. The tunnel is just over 11,000 feet in elevation and is about two miles long. About half an hour later, I crossed Vail Pass. There was a lot of construction on the west side of the pass, as it seems they are adding another lane to each side of the highway. I’ll note that there is a paved bike path adjacent to the highway from Vail to Copper Mountain, going up over the pass, covering a distance of about twenty miles. I have ridden it before. That bike trail will get your heartrate up!
The next major attraction, another engineering and construction marvel, is passing through the thirteen-mile long Glenwood Canyon. It is a dramatic experience as the road follows the Colorado River from Gypsum to Glenwood Springs. There is another long canyon, close to twenty miles, with the road following the meandering river between the towns of De Beque and Paradise. I could not find a name for this canyon section of road. It could be the canyon walls are so far apart that it is not referred to as a canyon? I don’t know, but it is dramatic with high cliffs and a curvy pathway.
Colorado National Monument is one of the most spectacular parks in the country in my view. It has beautiful desert landscapes, tall sandstone cliffs and rock formations, layers of of various colors, and panoramic views that rival those of the major national parks in Utah (Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Byrce, and Zion). There are two entrances, each having a spectacular climb of 1500-2000’ over approximately four miles with numerous weaving switchbacks and some tunnels carved through the colorful rock.
It seems CNM is out of the way enough, when touring these parks, that it does not receive the numbers of visitors those other parks receive. And I think park employees, other visitors, and much of the local population are good with that fact.
I have been to CNM at least a dozen times, but this time I stayed just one night. It got down to 32 degrees, and the forecast said it would be warmer at the BLM campgrounds along Route 128 in Utah on the way to Moab. This is likely due to the elevation change from 5800’ at CNM and about 4100’ on Route 128. I took a morning walk along the Rim Trail, which provide sweeping views of Wedding Canyon from Window Rock to the Visitor Center. There were spectacular views, almost always more than you thought it would be. Nature has a way of doing that, of surprising you.
Although CNM is a great place to ride bikes, I opted out of doing so this time around. One reason was simply being there only one day, but I also had a cortisone shot in my right hip a few weeks ago, having developed some arthritis. I have been riding but have backed off some on distance, duration, and intensity of my rides. I’ve ridden about 270 miles in the three weeks since the shot, and it has been pain free. I want to gradually return to my normal patterns, which puts more stress on one’s bones and muscles, and see if there are limits to what I can do. Those four mile climbs are more stress I want to try at this point.
That’s it for now.
Posts of other trips to Colorado National Monument
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