Vega Lake SP, CO - Sep 2007

When researching places to stay, I often look for campgrounds (state & national) that have a water feature (lakes are our favorite, next are oceans, and finally rivers.) We prefer parks where at least some of the campsites have a view to the water. I picked Vega Lake State Park because the web site, as well as other camper's comments, indicated that most sites had a view to the lake. We weren't disappointed.

The campground was a large loop with paved, level sites that were well spaced from each other. The terracing afforded each site a pretty nice view to the lake. The only downside was the lack of trees that might have allowed some privacy between sites.

During our week-long stay here, the weather was unpredictable -- warm and sunny one day and cold and stormy the next. One notable storm blackened the sky, darkened the water and the wind whipped the lake into a frenzy of whitecaps. Other than being leery of a damaging hail storm, we tend to relish storms and will often retreat to the back of the RV where we have 270° views out of huge windows.

Of course, the sunsets were pretty spectacular also. On this particular evening, the lake and the entire sky had a rosy glow. This photo was taken looking to the eastern horizon, not the west.

One day, as the sun was going down, we saw all these jet contrails in the sky. The colorful sunset exaggerated the bizarre patterns and made it look like an air traffic controllers worst nightmare.

At an elevation of 8,000', the fall nights were beginning to turn chilly. On our last day, the temps dipped below freezing overnight and in the morning there was a thick layer of frost on most surfaces -- including our car.

Our view to the south was of this tree covered peak. When we arrived it had just an itty bitty spot of fall colored foliage on it and over the course of a week, we watched as the color progressed down the mountainside.

Another picture of the same mountain, this time with a little more fall foliage and the sunset adding yet more color to it. The contrail looked like a big zipper in the sky.