Site #13

September 3rd, 2026

I rose at 5:30am today. It is another travel day. I had prepared the trailer and hitched it to the truck last night, so was ready to depart Peak One Campground by 6:00am. I drove a short way south on Highway 9 towards Breckenridge to the water department RV dump station, emptied the tanks and filled up with fresh water. Then I passed back through Frisco as the sun popped up over the eastward mountain range and jumped onto Interstate 70 towards Denver. I slowly gained altitude to Eisenhower Tunnel for the pass under the Continental Divide and started the long down grade to Idaho Springs before exiting onto the Central City Parkway, a four lane mountain road built for tourists to reach the Central City and Blackhawk gambling casinos.

By 8:15, I was pulling into the Kelly Dahl USFS Campground near Nederland. I was arriving before the holiday weekend camping crowd and fortunately managed to get my usual Site #13 in the First Come First Serve loop. I plunked down my registration and check, covering a 14 day stay, using my Lifetime Senior Pass so nicely provided by the U.S. Government to secure a 50% discount of $14.50 per day. The campground was nearly empty but would fill up by Friday evening.

Kelly Dahl has become my entry and exit campground for the season whenever staying in Colorado. I was last here on May 27 after waiting for the high country nights to warm up and remain above 32 degrees. I arrived back then on opening day and after one nice day in the 60s, spent the next 4 freezing and under 10 inches of snow. You never know what the weather will be like in May, just as you can also get surprised in September. I also learned that the return of Afib was going to make the next 2.5 months miserable whenever I was above 8,000 feet in elevation.

The facility closes on September 18th but that will be after my departure. If the weather holds I will find dispersed camping in the area for a few more days, and then will drop down to one of the State Parks along the front range to wait for my final Cardiac follow-up appointment on October 1st.

Probably the 2nd will find me high tailing it south to New Mexico, where I will turn west and head for a winter stay near Yuma, Arizona. That means the desert, not my favorite environment, where I trade elk, mule deer and bighorn sheep, for rattlesnakes, tarantulas and scorpions. But it also means temperatures in the 70s most days, and I can park the trailer for 5 months without the hassle of moving every few days. This year I will try to stay along the Colorado River and the lagoons and ponds of the upper Imperial Valley. It could be an interesting winter due to the Super El Nino being predicted. Think possible warm rainy weather with hurricanes winding in off of an abnormally warm Central Pacific ocean.

For now, I will wait out the Labor Day crowds, maybe catching a movie at one of the Boulder area Cinemas, while stopping for a visit with my son and daughter in law occasionally. Students are back at the University of Colorado, so Pearl Street may be a hopping place on weekends. I’ll probably visit the bookstore and grab a seafood burrito. And, up here, near Nederland, the Aspen trees will be turning golden soon.

The fall, my favorite time of year.

I like the theory that home isn’t somewhere you find. It is somewhere that finds you. Colorado has a way of doing that to people. They head home and realize they left a piece of themselves behind.