terrain

From the New York Times Travel Section:

A Conversation Between Philip Caputo and William Least Heat-Moon

CAPUTO: One of the things that’s impressed me about traveling in this country — and I’ve done a lot of world traveling, as you have, too — is not only the size of the country but the variety of the landscape, which is like nothing I have ever seen anywhere else. I mean you can be in Arizona or New Mexico and think you’re in North Africa, and not terribly far away it might look like the Swiss Alps, and someplace else — say, the Dakotas — looks like Ukraine.

HEAT-MOON: American topography is so incredibly diverse. If you’re traveling by auto, the windshield becomes a kind of movie.

This is so true. We've been driving through the national forest lands in Northwest Colorado this week and I feel like we've seen at least 5 different varieties of landscape over the course of a few hundred miles. Sparse pine forests dotting rolling hills turned ski runs, dense pine and aspen forests climbing alpine slopes that tumble into pristine lake basins, crumbly red rock plateaus covered in scraggly shrubs, canyons where the road curls through the basin alongside white-water river, and long, flat sun-scorched sections with grazing cattle. The windshield has been a movie indeed. And, we have only visited one national park so far. There is so much to see in this country. It is truly unbelievable.

Kids, can you find both Adventure Dykes in these pictures? 

Our tent beside Lake Dillon, an hour west of Denver. We spent two nights here biking around the reservoir and hiking in the nearby mountains. 

Hiking in the mountains. This hike was close to the Frisco/Breckenridge area. 3.5 miles up to two alpine lakes called the Mohawk Lakes. We hiked from 10,164 to 12,104 feet elevation. 7 miles and a picnic lunch, then we headed to a remote (read: free) campsite near another lake. A great day.

Driving to our campsite through an aspen forest a few miles outside of Aspen, Colorado. This is Bear Country BIG TIME.

We took the train ride in Leadville, Colorado. These are lodgepole pine trees. Leadville used to be one of the biggest cities in Colorado due to the silver mines located there. It used to be called Cloudville, obviously. 

From the car, an hour east of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, just after we had to pull the car over and wait out a hail storm.We watched rainstorms from miles away for most of the the 4 hour drive to Fort Collins. The drive was all ranches and farmland. Until we got to the canyon...

This is Route 14 which runs through the Poudre Canyon on the way in to Fort Collins. Heavy rain storms do a lot of damage here because fires have scorched the soil. Scorches soil repels water creating washouts and rock slides. Just after we took this photo, they closed the road and we had to reroute. 

Here is the most handsome photographer ever atop a mountain taking a photo of another mountain. This is Rocky Mountain National Park, the first national park we have visited thusfar. The hike to Gem Lake was only 1.7 miles up with a 1,000ft elevation gain to just under 9,000ft, but for some reason, maybe because it was 90degrees and had very little shade, it was a difficult hike.