Colorado State Forest, CO - Jul 2006

Well, I think we set a new record for the shortest distance traveled between two campgrounds in one day! We left Ranger Lakes and drove a whopping 11 miles to Bockman campground. Now that's a perfect driving day! Bockman Campground is in the Colorado State Forest area -- located in the northernmost part of central Colorado and about 75 miles west of Ft. Collins.

We had to leave the Ranger Lakes campground (seen in this photo) on Friday since all of the sites were reserved for the weekend, so we scouted around and found a few unoccupied sites at Bockman and discovered that we actually prefered the Bockman location. What a change of scenery we got with this move. Our site at Ranger Lakes was nestled deep in a grove of pine trees and between their dense shade and the cloudy skies, we were pretty gloomy for 3 days. We only had our awning out to protect us from the constant drizzle.

Our site at Bockman was out in the wide open space with views for miles and we were surrounded with green meadows filled with lots of wildflowers -- a refreshing change and one that lifted my spirits. I tend to get the blues when I don't get enough light and sunshine. There were several campsite selections -- either out in the open or nestled in the pines. The only downside was that Bockman had no hookups (no water spigots nor electricity), so we had to rely on our batteries to run all our electronic toys. We were able to dump our tanks and fill up with water before we left Ranger Lakes, so we easily managed for the five days we stayed there.

I can honestly say that we're sure getting weary of having to work our travel plans around campgrounds that get filled with reservations on the weekends -- and we really hate to make reservations as that binds us to being in a certain place at a specific time. But, we're managing to figure out ways to get around it.

The weather was nice, but unpredictable -- sunny and warm most mornings and then clouding up in the afternoons. On three different days we had rain and thunderstorms in the afternoon and one night we had a doozy of a light show with lightening all around us and the thunderboomers echoing off the mountains. We did manage to escape the heat wave that seemed to have been baking much of the rest of the country and we enjoyed daytime highs in the low 70s and the nights got down into the 40s.

North Michigan Lake (and campground) is located about 2 miles south of Bockman Campground. What a lovely scenic area and there are several very nice campsites with great views of the water -- some right on the lake too. Unfortunately, these too were reserved -- boo -- so we didn't get a chance to give them a try, but will remember them for the next time we are in the area.

This area, and specifically the town of Walden, is known as the Moose Viewing Capital of Colorado -- and the State Forest is home to 500-600 moose. We hoped to see some moose in the park, but all we saw were several herds of cattle wandering by. This group grazed up and down the meadow behind us and one afternoon they settled in for their dinner right in our "back yard". When I went to take a photo, they all looked my direction and made for a cute photo.

P.S. Just in case you're thinking that everything was wonderful there, here's some unpleasant news -- the deer flies were horrendous -- huge, pesky and lots of them. The campground host said they've never seen them this bad -- must be because of all the rain they had recently. We took refuge inside the RV (thank goodness for our big windows), but we had to keep an eye on Rudy and Scotty when they were outside lest they got carried off by a swarm of hungry flies!