bakerla
Man, Myth, Legend
Made a trip out to Ouray, CO for the 2012 FJ Summit. The event is well planned and executed; I was impressed with the organizers, vendors and people. My trip report is as follows. It is lengthy, but will hopefully serve some good tips and advice for others and allow me to revisit to plan for next years trip.
For navigation I used my phone: Android based Droid Razr. Google Maps Navigation worked flawlessly. Had a GPS signal for most of the route to and from Colorado and had good GPS signal on all the trails. For trail use I used an app called Everytrail Pro and had downloaded e-guides from Funtreks for all the trails we did. The app worked great. It allows for live tracking and provides some preloaded points of interest along the trails from the guides. Excellent app. You can add your own notes or points of interest while tracking. So long as you downloaded the maps prior to getting out of data coverage the topo maps were cached on my phone.
I purchased 2 books for planning and to take along. The Funtreks Colorado guide and a Colorado Trails Southwest Region book. The Funtreks guide is cool, simple and easy to use. It has lots of trails throughout Colorado. The Colorado Trails book has trails focused on southwest Colorado. It's more than a guide book and has lots of history in it. It is missing a couple of popular trails in the Ouray area and the Funtreks book covered all the more popular trails.
To Ouray
A friend and I departed Houston at 0530 on Monday morning. Our route went through Ft Worth to Amarillo with a stop in Clayton, NM. We arrived in Clayton at 1630. During planning for the trip I used MS Streets and Trips to plan the route and times. I thought Streets and Trips would have automatically adjusted for DST, but it didn’t. I had planned on arriving in Clayton at 1730, but DST adjusted to 1630. In hindsight I would have planned to stop in Raton, NM which is just an hour or so further driving. We stayed at the Clayton KOA. The stay was nice, but few restaurants in town were open. We had planned at eating at the Rabbit Ear Cafe, but it was closed. Instead, we ate the Eklund Hotel. The food was decent, but more important was they had cold beer.
We were anxious to leave the next day (Tuesday), so we left at 0600, an hour earlier than planned. Again, no restaurants were open in Clayton at this hour, so we drove to Raton, NM and ate at McDonalds. We traveled north from Raton and took CO 69 over to CO 50. Good thing we left an hour earlier, else we would have been delayed quite a bit because they were shutting down CO 69 for road construction. We missed it by 20 minutes. We took CO 50 to Montrose and stopped for lunch at the Horsefly Brewing Company at about 1330. Not so luckily, they weren’t serving beer for 5 days because they were busted on Saturday for serving alcohol to a minor, so we missed having a unique beer.
On the way out of Montrose, we stopped at Walmart and bought our food items for the week. From there we traveled south on 550 to Ridgway and stopped at Rigs Fly Shop in Ridgway. My friend John, intended on fly fishing while we were in CO. Back north on 550 to Ridgway State Park where we arrived close to 1530 on Tuesday; we camped at the Pa Co Chu Puk campgrounds. The park is great and the camp sites were nice. We camped about 50 yards from the Uncompahgre River. The sites were walk in camping. We brought a 2 wheel dolly to haul the packed containers and cooler. Even on wheels, pulling that stuff uphill to our site was tiring, not to mention being at 6,900 ft. Getting registered with the Summit late, we were limited to camp sites as all tent camping site near Ouray were booked. The night before we arrived, fisherman spotted a bear in river also fishing. This is also the same bear that crashed a wedding reception last month. The only downfall to camping in Ridgway was the 20-25 minute drive into Ouray for the Summit dinners and trail runs. One positive note was that gas prices were close to .20 cents cheaper in Ridgway than in Ouray.
Miles of nothing through Texas.
Into New Mexico
Kabin at the Clayton KOA.
The Eklund Hotel
Camping at Ridgway State Park
The river 50 yards away
For navigation I used my phone: Android based Droid Razr. Google Maps Navigation worked flawlessly. Had a GPS signal for most of the route to and from Colorado and had good GPS signal on all the trails. For trail use I used an app called Everytrail Pro and had downloaded e-guides from Funtreks for all the trails we did. The app worked great. It allows for live tracking and provides some preloaded points of interest along the trails from the guides. Excellent app. You can add your own notes or points of interest while tracking. So long as you downloaded the maps prior to getting out of data coverage the topo maps were cached on my phone.
I purchased 2 books for planning and to take along. The Funtreks Colorado guide and a Colorado Trails Southwest Region book. The Funtreks guide is cool, simple and easy to use. It has lots of trails throughout Colorado. The Colorado Trails book has trails focused on southwest Colorado. It's more than a guide book and has lots of history in it. It is missing a couple of popular trails in the Ouray area and the Funtreks book covered all the more popular trails.
To Ouray
A friend and I departed Houston at 0530 on Monday morning. Our route went through Ft Worth to Amarillo with a stop in Clayton, NM. We arrived in Clayton at 1630. During planning for the trip I used MS Streets and Trips to plan the route and times. I thought Streets and Trips would have automatically adjusted for DST, but it didn’t. I had planned on arriving in Clayton at 1730, but DST adjusted to 1630. In hindsight I would have planned to stop in Raton, NM which is just an hour or so further driving. We stayed at the Clayton KOA. The stay was nice, but few restaurants in town were open. We had planned at eating at the Rabbit Ear Cafe, but it was closed. Instead, we ate the Eklund Hotel. The food was decent, but more important was they had cold beer.
We were anxious to leave the next day (Tuesday), so we left at 0600, an hour earlier than planned. Again, no restaurants were open in Clayton at this hour, so we drove to Raton, NM and ate at McDonalds. We traveled north from Raton and took CO 69 over to CO 50. Good thing we left an hour earlier, else we would have been delayed quite a bit because they were shutting down CO 69 for road construction. We missed it by 20 minutes. We took CO 50 to Montrose and stopped for lunch at the Horsefly Brewing Company at about 1330. Not so luckily, they weren’t serving beer for 5 days because they were busted on Saturday for serving alcohol to a minor, so we missed having a unique beer.
On the way out of Montrose, we stopped at Walmart and bought our food items for the week. From there we traveled south on 550 to Ridgway and stopped at Rigs Fly Shop in Ridgway. My friend John, intended on fly fishing while we were in CO. Back north on 550 to Ridgway State Park where we arrived close to 1530 on Tuesday; we camped at the Pa Co Chu Puk campgrounds. The park is great and the camp sites were nice. We camped about 50 yards from the Uncompahgre River. The sites were walk in camping. We brought a 2 wheel dolly to haul the packed containers and cooler. Even on wheels, pulling that stuff uphill to our site was tiring, not to mention being at 6,900 ft. Getting registered with the Summit late, we were limited to camp sites as all tent camping site near Ouray were booked. The night before we arrived, fisherman spotted a bear in river also fishing. This is also the same bear that crashed a wedding reception last month. The only downfall to camping in Ridgway was the 20-25 minute drive into Ouray for the Summit dinners and trail runs. One positive note was that gas prices were close to .20 cents cheaper in Ridgway than in Ouray.
Miles of nothing through Texas.
Into New Mexico
Kabin at the Clayton KOA.
The Eklund Hotel
Camping at Ridgway State Park
The river 50 yards away
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