Haviland Lake, Durango, CO - Jul 2008

After a wonderful two-months of enjoying the company of my family, we left southern California in mid-July and made a mad dash northeast across the searing desert and up into the cool mountains of Colorado. We had read that Haviland Lake was a very scenic park and that the campground had been recently updated and included several electric sites. Also, since it was perched at 8,100' elevation, we figured we would enjoy cool nights and summer days that weren't too hot.


While the park offered several electric sites in addition to lakeside sites and lake view sites, they were all more crowded together than we like, plus they cost extra and, at least to us, it wasn't worth it. Instead, we opted for a site further up the hill with views of the mountains, a nice, private patio and some elbow room. We were glad we did as we later discovered that the creek that flows through the campground -- dumps out at the lakeside sites and they were swarming with mosquitoes. Our site up on the hill always had a nice breeze that kept the biting insects at bay.


We were only a short walk from the lake and every day we took several walks down to and around the shoreline and enjoyed the views. This was a popular lake for fishermen, so we were able to ask one to take our photo.


The dogs often came with us as they were relishing the cooler weather. We took it pretty easy while we were here as we were adjusting to the elevation change. We were worried about Rudy with his enlarged heart, but he did pretty good going up and down the mountainside.


The birds were in abundance, so I put out my feeders and was tickled when the hummingbirds came out in full force. I hadn't seen a rufous in a long time, so was glad to get a picture of this guy that showed off his golden-orange throat.

At first, I only put out two small, individual hummingbird feeders, but the "bully birds" took over those and drove off all the other birds, so I finally put out my multi-bird feeder and it was almost always a full house at the trough.



As is typical in the mountains, we were inundated with chipmunks and squirrels. Since we often let the dogs stay outside, the ground critters tend to stay away from the patio, but sometimes a few brave ones will run right under the dog's noses. Of course, our two dogs are getting so old that they pretty much ignore the critters.


Another view of Haviland Lake and the bluffs on the other side. All-in-all, this was a nice place to sit and enjoy the cooler weather. The downsides to the campground were -- no dump (grrr), but there was one up the road about 8 miles (for $10) and we could not fill our water tanks from the spigots in the park. We managed to make it 10 days before needing to dump/refill and since we were ready to leave anyways, it wasn't a big deal, we just thought that it was odd for one of the more upscale national forest campgrounds to not have a dump nor water for tank filling. When we left, we went into Durango and used the free dump and water that is available at the city park.