Bellaire Lake, CO - Jul 2006

FINALLY -- a chance to sit and spend some time on my blog. We've been in "tourist mode" for the past several weeks, so I've got lots of photos to share. I'm hoping to start with recent events and then fill in the gaps back to May, so check back often and check the archives to see what's new.

We left Denver last week because that whole area was about to get cooked with a scorching heat wave and we figured an escape up to the mountains would keep us out of the worst of the summertime temps. We still wanted a place that had electricity just in case we needed to run the air conditioner (which we did as the daytime temps still managed to get into the high 80s despite the 8,500' elevation.)

We are currently sitting at Bellaire Lake Campground in the Roosevelt National Forest. It's located about 35 miles west of Ft. Collins and is a pretty little campground with 26 sites. What attracted us to this campground was that it was off the beaten path, near a small lake and it had electrical hookups (which is not too common for national forest campgrounds.)

We have a great spot -- at the outer edge of the campground with our patio facing a lovely wooded area covered with pines and aspens. Our site is nice and level and has a gravel base that helps to keep the dust and dirt to a minimum. There are wildflowers growing all around us including purple & white columbines. Our neighbors are at a distance and the understory is thick enough to provide plenty of privacy.

The only down side to this campground is that it does not have a dump station. In fact, this whole area is pitifully lacking any kind of sanitary waste facility and our choices are to drive 35 miles back to Ft. Collins or 40 miles further west to Gould. Neither are great choices, so we're just trying to be very frugal in our waste water generation and will probably only stay here 5 days before moving on.

Bellaire Lake is small, but very scenic with tall pines and large, tumbled rock formations surrounding the lake. We walked the trail that went around the perimeter of the lake and it only took us about 30 minutes -- and that was counting numerous picture taking stops. There is a day use area with a tree-shaded, lakeside boardwalk and picnic area. No motorized boats are allowed on the lake, so it's very peaceful. It's a popular fishing lake and on Saturday it was practically "standing room only" as families staked out their spots all around the lake.

The campground is near the lake, but none of the sites have views of the lake, so every day I took a 5 minute stroll over to the lake to enjoy it's beauty and to get some photos at different times of the day. There were lots of opportunities for shots of early morning fishermen, junior sized fishermen and families enjoying a day on the lake, but this beached canoe with it's bright red color reflected in the lake was my favorite.

We took several day drives while staying here. One was along Hwy 14 -- a scenic byway aka the Cache la Poudre River. We followed it for several miles and stopped at several campgrounds to check them out for future visits to the area. We stopped at the day use area of the Mountain Park National Forest Campground and enjoyed a walk alongside the Poudre River. The doggies had to dip their paws into the river -- adding yet another notch in their belt of waterways visited.