Redstone NFCG, CO - Sep 2007

On our way from the northeastern side of Colorado to the Grand Junction area, we decided to stop at a National Forest Campground called Redstone. I'd decided on it because it was a public campground with hookups and was within an hours drive of Aspen and the famous Maroon Bells National Park. We were delighted to find a fairly new, well laid-out campground in a very picturesque setting.

As I said, the campground was surrounded on all sides by spectacularly tall, carved cliffs that were the most amazingly deep red color streaked with pink, gold and yellow. Near the top, they were sprinkled with pines and aspens and that made their red color all that much more intense. Further down the mountainside the foliage got thicker and the tall shrubs were just beginning to put on their autumn finery. Our pretty site was one of several that were terraced up the side of the hill. We thought this was the best site of all because it was nestled into a grove of aspens and gave us a complete sense of privacy yet still afforded us great views up to the top of the peaks. We did have to hunt around for an opening in the sky for our satellite dishes, but managed to get both internet and tv signals.

The only downside to this campground was, while it had water & electric hookups, it had no dump station and the nearest dump station was 20 miles away. It was also pricey too -- $30/night. For that price, they should have included a dump station. The other complaint we had was the lack of hot water (not even warm water) in the restrooms, so using their new and very nice facilities for a shower was out of the question. The water in the restrooms was solar heated, but since the park was nestled in a very narrow canyon with very tall, steep cliffs all around, the number of sunlight hours that hit those panels was very limited and even less so because of it being in the fall. We stayed for four days while we toured the area and then continued on to the Grand Junction area.

We did have one heck of a rainbow display while here. The rainstorm passed by pretty quickly, but the remaining rainbow lingered on for quite some time. It arched from one group of the red rocks -- up and over the sky and touched down on the other red peaks. I was sure wishing for a wide angle lens so I could have captured it spanning the whole canyon.

One more view of the rainbow as it kissed the top of the red peaks.