I am heading back to the Colorado Trail but I have company this year. The plan is for me to drive the dogs to Denver and have Tracy fly up to meet us. I’ll hike for 3-4 days and then meet Tracy and the dogs at a road and take a day off. Also, CW will beb joining me for the first section.
On Tuesday, the dogs and I took off in the truck for the 1000 mile drive to Colorado. We left early and our goal was to reach Amarillo and perhaps sleep in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The dogs did really well – Darby slept in both beds while Izzy would sleep on the seat. I’d stop every couple of hours and take a 30 minute walk with them. I loaded the truck up with food and a cooler so I’d just munch on stuff I brought along.
We made it to Palo Duro in the middle of the afternoon but the campground was full and they wouldn’t let me just sleep in the car. Since I’ve been there many times before, I thought it would be nice to take the dogs on a long hike to wear them out. We started towards Lighthouse Rock, but it was over 90 degrees and the little bees were enjoying all the flowers and my legs. I changed our direction and took them for a couple miles along the creek. They were really eager at first, but the sun and heat quickly slowed them.
Darby in the car and Izzy inspecting a tree in Palo Duro.
We left the park and kept going through Amarillo looking for a quiet spot to pull over and sleep in the truck. I was getting worried since all I saw were flat lands and large ranches until we pulled into the town of Dumas, TX. I spotted what looked like a high school and drove toward it. It turned out to be a park, many sports fields, and a pool. After dinner and many laps around the park, we found a quiet place between fields and set up for sleeping in the truck. Darby is really easy and sleeps on her bed, but Izzy kept creeping off and wanted to sleep on me….
The field where we camped and a view of the dogs in the truck
The next night we made it to Limon, CO and stayed at an Econo Lodge. That is where the dogs discovered prairie dogs and they tried to digs them out.
Tonight we are in Buena Vista at a nice little AirBnB Tracy found. We just had an awesome dinner and took a walk to the park. Tomorrow we leave for the CO trail crossing of HWY 50. Tracy and the dogs will walk with us for a couple hours as we climb towards the Continental Divide. CW and I will spend the next two days hiking to our pick-up spot on HWY 114. Then I’ll take a day off with Tracy and the dogs and CW will start his journey home with a bus ride back to Denver.
Over the next 3 weeks, Tracy and I will repeat this 4 more times. The map below shows the trail in red. The red dots are the pick-up places. The houses are the different places we are staying and the teal hikers is a yurt that Tracy is hiking with the dogs to stay with me one night.
The list below is our schedule…
