Category: Colorado Trip, Fall 2019

We have been coming to Dillon for years.  Kim and I actually spent a weekend here on a road trip in 1991, a year before we got married.  I still remember that trip, back when we were very poor, and had to make a tough decision to camp by the lake in the rain or spring for a hotel room.  The hotel room won!  The mountains and the lake drew us here, and have been drawing us ever since.

About a year after we got married, Kim’s mom Myra and step-father Chuck bought a quarter share of a place here, and it was  used for ski trips for a few years.  In 1997, they finally bought a place of their own, the place we are staying now.  Our son Fletcher had his first birthday here, and it holds other very special memories for us.  Myra decided she wanted the place to stay in the family, so we are now one third owners, along with Kim’s step-brother Dave and step-sister Nancy.

Here is a shot from the balcony during a storm a few days ago.  We love the frequent storms here in the Rockies., as long as we can avoid being stuck out in hail!

We have been here at least a dozen times for ski trips, and have summered here numerous times.  We have never been able to stay here in September and October, since Kim was teaching.  This is the first year we have this time free, and we are looking forward to the cooler weather and the changing colors of fall.

Being here in September has been a stark departure from our summers here.  We are used to walking into restaurants and waiting 20 minutes for a table.  Not now!  Just walk right in!  We have attended a few concerts that Dillon does in their amphitheater, and in the past you needed to set up your chairs in the morning to have a place to sit.  Not now!  This is awesome!

Even the hiking trails are down to just a few locals!  September is a great time to be here!

For you low landers, the City of Dillon sits at 9,111 feet (our townhouse is at about 9,300 feet).  The first few days are spent gasping for breath just from getting out of your chair.  It does take about a week for your body to acclimate, and even then, some of the hiking trails around here are lung-busters!

Our first hike is always Old Dillon Reservoir, which was originally built in the 1930’s to supply water to the original town of Dillon.  In 1956, the residents of the original city were told they needed to vacate and move about a mile away to higher ground, as a dam was going to be built to create Lake Dillon, which now provides water to Denver and other front range cities.  The original location of Dillon is now under 250 feet of water.

Old Dillon Reservoir is a short 1.7 mile hike, and offers great views of Lake Dillon and the surrounding mountains.

The path around the Old Dillon Reservoir was deserted.

Dillon is in Summit County, Colorado, and this is home to more excellent hikes than likely any other part of Colorado.  We love our hikes, and will be featuring our favorites in further posts.  We highly recommend you visit Summit County if you really want to get that “Rocky Mountain High”!  No, that has nothing to do with the fact there is a marijuana dispensary on every corner!

 

I’m going to do a few posts about our current trip to Summit County, Colorado, where we are spending  most of September and October.  We are staying in Dillon, in a townhouse that my in-laws bought 22 years ago.

Quick note, Kim’s mother Myra passed away on May 23rd, so we have been quite busy clearing out her primary house in Los Alamitos, CA.  We headed to Dillon on August 27, two days after escrow closed, driving from Livermore to the beautiful garden city (definitely tongue-in-cheek) of Elko, Nevada.  On the way we stopped to charge our car in Lovelock, Nevada, which is most recently famous for housing your favorite double murderer, OJ Simpson (just outside Lovelock).  You know you are near OJ’s former “hood” when you see the “don’t pick up hitchhikers sign” on the side of the freeway.  Can’t you just picture OJ standing by the side of the road with his thumb out?  Maybe my autopilot freaks out and swerves right all of a sudden?  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

We walked around Lovelock to kill some time, and suffice it to say this is a very sad little town.  Nearly every storefront is closed up, and has been for awhile.  Lovelock was a stopping point on the Humboldt Trail to California during the gold rush, and is named after English settlor George Lovelock, who decided in 1866 that this was the place to stop and make a home.  Maybe it was a lot prettier back then??  Maybe they failed to let us know that George was blind?

Today Lovelock is mostly famous due to couples placing padlocks on some chains in Lovers Lock Plaza.

The above photo is about one tenth of the overall locks.  That’s a lot of locks!  I was surprised there wasn’t a vending maching on site selling them!  It puts an interesting spin on it when you realize that at least half of those locks ended in breakups.  Yeah, I’m quite the romantic.

From there we were off to Elko where we would be staying the night.  We have stayed in Elko several times as this is a good stopping point for the drive to Dillon, which we have done about a half dozen times.  I will say Elko is pretty damn ugly, but not too far from Elko are the Ruby Mountains, and almost nobody knows about them!

We didn’t hike there on this trip, but we did the last time we made this drive a little over a year ago.  The drive from Elko into Lamoille Canyon is a quick 30 minute trip…and it will leave you wondering why the Ruby Mountains aren’t a National Park!

in 2013 we hiked up to Liberty Pass, and the views on this hike are simply amazing!  This is Lamoille Lake along the trail.

A short distance from the top of Liberty Pass (elevation 10,489 feet), with Liberty Lake below.

We were going to hike down to Liberty Lake, but a thunderstorm came out of nowhere, so we headed back down as quickly as we could.  Here is Fletcher after we basically ran most of the way down.  The storm had blown over by then, but we had plenty of exciting moments with rain/hail and lightning strikes all around us.

Just incredible flowers near the bottom of the trail.  If you ever do this trail make sure you take the northern most trail (on the left) at a junction on the way back down.  Both trails end up in the same parking lot.

Two more shots from the Ruby’s.  This is on a different hike called the Thomas Creek Trail, which Kim and I did last year, just a few days after our retirement.

While Elko may be your typical ugly desert town, it’s worth a stay just to visit the Ruby’s…even if you don’t do a hike.  The drive into the canyon is well worth it.  Here is Kim sporting her retirement shirt.