Tuesday Jul 2, 2024 Noodling around Creede CO

 

Marshall Park Campground was full last night. We talked to a man who went to Middlebury College in VT and he said he pulled in at 4pm and got a site first come first serve. Deb says 8 of the sites are reservable and 7 are first come. So it’s busy but not crazy busy. Today reinforced the thought that this area is not that popular, or has not been discovered yet so there is plenty of room in cafes, stores, hiking trails and dirt roads. It rained pretty hard last night so everything will be soggy today.

Breakfast in the van, cereal, and then the 11 muddy dirt road miles to Love Lake. About half of those miles were very wide, albeit muddy, nicely graded road since there is a large development out here where it appears that a lot of people live. Every house seems to be a log cabin or looks like a log cabin with big windows facing the mountain views. The road gets narrower and narrower and then it’s single lane with wide spots that you negotiate with the few people you meet coming the other way. Love Lake is a reservoir at 10,500 ft. in elevation, and there was a young man and his grandfather fishing. They told us that it was trout they were fishing for and that all the lakes around here are stocked. There were two rigs set up for camping and a couple of more trucks came in with fisherman.

Today it never rained and was mostly clear all day. We hiked around the little lake enough to stretch our legs but there is no trail per se.

Back down the muddy 11 miles and the poor van is encrusted with thick mud that hardened up over the day.

We went to the historical museum in Creede and they were open today. Yesterday they were closed due to a doctor’s appointment. The place is run by an older man who must have been okay medically speaking since he was there today! The museum is your typical collection of old late 1800’s stuff and a lot of old black and white pictures of the late 1800’s. This town boomed for 4 or 5 years and then went bust. But tourism bailed them out.

Following the museum we stopped at Coffee on the Fly for some iced coffee drinks (Deb said “best iced chai ever”) and people watching. We then strolled down to the actually pretty nice grocery store and bought a loaf of bread since we just ran out.

Next stop was the trailhead at Shallow Creek a few miles out of town. The hiking brochure we’d picked up had one of the mileages wrong so we got a little side tracked trying to find it. We were on roads that were very single lane but fortunately there is little traffic so we only had a couple pull off negotiations. The fields of wildflowers along the way were beautiful. We finally did find the trailhead and we hiked about 3 miles round trip on my new knee, which is about all I want to push it for now. There were beef cattle we had to negotiate at one point but other than that it was a mild up and down trail.

Then back to the campground to chill and rest the knee and re-up on ibuprofen. Tonight Deb got us the last two seats at Creede Repertory Theater’s rendition of Young Frankenstein. We reserved a spot in the Creede Hotel for dinner at six and what looked like everyone who was going to the play next door was getting dinner there. So the kitchen was slammed and we ordered a simple salad and bowl of soup and still waited 45 minutes to get those, but enjoyed sitting outside and listening to a musician as we waited. We got to the theater at 7pm and we had two separate seats in the very nice Creede Repertory Theater (rows A-O, 1-14). Very professionally done show and we enjoyed it very much. They started this theater in 1967 which seems hard to believe for this tiny isolated town.

Then back to the campground and lights out in our tiny filthy van.