619-822-3296 
I have to say that it was very sad leaving Crested Butte. We stopped on the way out to dump our RV & get more water. There is a $10. Dump station in town off of Butte Street in case you ever need it. Then we were off and heading to Grand Mesa, Colorado.
Mommy let me get out in swim in the HUGE Blue Mesa Reservoir on the way. Man! We just made it before this HUGE storm hit! It was pouring! It doesn’t rain like that in San Diego!
We lucked out and the storm subsided long enough for us to visit Black Canyon National Park. It was really a cool stop especially since they allow dogs (most National Parks aren’t dog friendly)!
Not many trails but the lookouts were awesome! There was a river at the bottom but it was too far down for me to swim in!
We even got a photo of the highest cliff in Colorado. It is 2300′ high. The sign said that if the Empire State Building stood on the canyon floor, it would only reach halfway to the top of the cliff! Crazy!
The drive to the Grand Mesa was pretty cool but since it was raining we didn’t get many photos of the view. Did you know that the Grand Mesa is the largest Mesa in the world and it has over 300 lakes on it! Do you think I can swim in all of them?
We arrived at Island Lake Campground around 6 p.m. There were no sites on the lake and we were bummed about that but the main thing is mommy needed electricity to charge her laptop so I can write these blogs for you!
We got settled into site 6 and then headed to the lake, there was a really nice lake trail. Pretty big lake but lots of mosquitos! Yuk! It started raining so we headed back to the RV & had dinner.
It was really cold in the night so since we had the luxury of having electric, mommy turned the heater on! I wasn’t complaining! It was cold and gloomy in the morning. We decided we better get going before it started to rain so we headed back down the lake trail.
The lake trail was a really cool trail, it was 1.7 miles to RT 65. We went up to the Visitor Center. Today happens to be mommy’s birthday and we have no cell or Internet here. Thank goodness the Visitor Center did so mommy go to see all of the Happy Birthday messages that she got via text, voice mail and Facebook! Thanks everyone for making mommy feel special! I love my mommy!
We had to get back and move Spirit from our campsite so we decided to move to Little Bear Campground, it was the next campground over and we got site #25 right on the lake!
We took off again for another hike cause it wasn’t raining yet! We found so many cool trails.
And lakes everywhere! Ward Lake was a cool lake with campsites on it!
The water was pretty cold, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go in but I did cause I love to swim!
We also saw deer and a bunch of marmots. They were screaming to each other!
It was super fun exploring.
We went back to the Visitor Center & the ranger told us we should just park in dispersed camping for free so we went & moved Spirit. Andy the camp host was super cool and he didn’t care. Look where we moved her. Right on Eggleston Lake.
If you go camping in Colorado, just know that there is tons of free camping in the National Forest. You are allowed to park anywhere!
We got parked just in time, it POURED down rain. Great sleeping weather and we both slept really well. The sunrise on the lake was really cool!
It is 9 a.m. and we are at the trailhead ready for our last epic hike. There are two options on the Crag Crest Trail. You can just do the lower trail which is 4 miles at 10,000′ or do the entire loop which is 10 ½ miles to over 11,000′. What do you think we did? The entire loop of course!
From the top, we could see over 15 lakes.
We hiked the rim at over 11,000′ and there were lots of pretty flowers up there.
I even got to play in the snow!
And go swimming in Upper Lake Eggleston!
There was one section with a bunch of blown over trees.
It was a beautiful day, no rain until the very end when it started sprinkling. You have to get an early start in the mountains because it rains most afternoons. We got some great photos of this cool hike, check them out HERE.
It was a very emotional day for mommy. This is our last big day of our journey. She spent the day looking back at each and every stop that we have made on this trip and thought of all of the wonderful people that we have met. It really has been an amazing 10 weeks and we feel very blessed.
Thanks for continuing to follow our journey. We have one more stop in Utah that proved to be a little exciting so…
Keep on following one last time!
