August 11-12, 2016 Maroon Bells, Colorado

Suuny, mid 70’s, blue bird skies, puffy white summer clouds. Perfect  high alpine days.

Our campground host job comes with this great campsite. Noah the maintance tech came by to hook us up to the huge solar panel. It had no power so will be back. We also get water and sewer hook ups. Propane if we wanted it, but we don’t have the hook up on our bus and our internal tank takes months to use up. It takes us about an hour after dinner to walk around the three campgrounds- 24 sites 16 reservable and full everynight and 8 walk in tent sites first come first serve also mostly full.  We greet the guests, talk to them about using the bear box, answer questions and generally visit with them, in our forest service uniforms. The rest of the day we can do what ever we want. They don’t pay us, but we don’t pay for anything either. Pretty sweet deal.

I finished this basket after about 4 days of work. Came out very nice. Noah and a couple guys from a solar company came by  today and hooked us up to the solar. It needs to be hooked to our battery to power the controler, so it did not need to be turned on-just connected to us.  Here they are with John reflected in the side of the bus hooking   the solar to our battery, it charges our battery-along with our own solar. After one day it seems like we still need to run the generator in the morning.  Time will tell how it works.

We  hiked up East Maroon Creek valley, which is one valley south from Maroon Creek Valley where we are camped.  We walked from our campsite across Maroon Creek, which we can hear at our campsite. Here is a view of the top of Maroon Valley from the hillside looking toward Maroon bells.

Looking up Maroon Valley from in the valley heading to the left into East Maroon Valley. This deer was on the trail, by the time I got the camera out she was in the trees watching us.

 

There were tons of wildflowers. A seed head, white flowers I have never seen before, blue Gentian, next 4 are another view of the blue gentian, Colorado columbine the state flower, aspen leaves. The leaves have a unique attachment to the branch that makes them quake in the breeze. It makes them and the light shimmer, a huge red clover.

Yellow  sweet clover, purple and albino monkshoods. Another view from higher up.

Small stream in a meadow. Yellow elder berries, thimble berries-one ripe, red raspberry and red elder berries.

An apsen leaf with raindrops, moose crossing sign-one was sighted up valley day before, cow parsnip seed head, and twin berries. A bunch of dudes on a horse back ride passed us in a flowery meadow.

Aspens - I can’t quit taking photos of them, they are so pretty. The  meadows are packed with wildflowers, here are John and I in the flowers.

A passing hiker took this of us in the flowers. We only saw  two other hikers. The east valley is much less congested with tourists than the Maroon Bells area-which is very heaveyly used. John in more aspens along the trail.

A map of the Maroon Bells Recreation Area. In the detail we hiked from the East Maroon trailhead-across the street from our campsit up the east Maroon Valley somewhere  underneath Pyramid peak, which is another 14er.