9/8 Gunnison or Bust

The next day we headed towards Leadville via Vail. Vail was very disappointing, just what you would expect, a little too Disney-like for us. Controlled parking garage, controlled pedestrian mall etc, etc, etc. Leadville at 10,200 ft on the other hand was a very real hard working mining town. It has interesting little houses from the 1800s that had a surprising amount of whimsical architectural detail painted in bright Victorian colors. We hung around long enough to tour the town, get the oil changed and mail a few postcards.

Continuing southwest, we climbed through the San Isabel Nation Forest to the continental divide at Cottonwood pass at 12,200 ft. We did some hiking above the tree line here but the weather was threatening and the air thin. Cam also found the exposure a little too exciting, but to her credit she did well.

We picked up 2 polish girls in the middle of nowhere, who had gone hiking and got caught in a thunderstorm. We gave them a lift back to the dude ranch they have been working at for the summer. They said the ranch was a little to isolated and they were ready to go back to Poland.

As the day drew on we ended up in Gunnison around happy hour so we swaggered into the local watering hole. One beer later we realized how tired we were and headed south to a nice campsite 10 miles out of town at the tip of Blue mesa Lake. We had an interesting night between lighting and a transformer blowing up in the campground. Felt like we were right at home. We have found that there are more NP and NF camping areas than could ever fill up. I hope we are not wrong about this.