The great summer trip has commenced! We left home on May 7 with the intention of arriving in Maine on June 1 and no set plans in between other than a weekend stop in St. Louis to visit our daughter. We thought we might spend a couple of days in Moab, UT so Amy Jo could mountain bike, but a sore back put a stop to those plans. We continued on to Grand Junction, CO . We decided to stop by Cabela’s as Amy Jo had a return to make and were thrilled to discover several campervans and RV’s set up in the parking lot. Free campsite #1 on this trip! I highly recommend the AllStays app for finding places to park overnight while on the road. With a resting place secured, it’s brewery time! The UnTappd app will help you find craft breweries wherever you are. We repaired to Kannah Creek Brewing Company for rehydration and a pretty good stromboli.
The next morning, we decided to hike the Mt. Garfield trail in nearby Palisade, CO. An absolutely brutal ascent/descent of 1.9 miles/1,886 ft of elevation change each way. Even a little exposure thrown in!
We even encountered some interesting wildlife, although further research revealed that these lizards are everywhere.
Continuing east through Colorado, Amy Jo expressed an interest in stopping in Vail, however, parking and getting around nipped that in the bud. Continuing on, we visited Outer Range Brewing Co in Frisco, CO and Dillon Dam Brewery in Dillon, CO. Just in case it’s not obvious yet, my preferred routine for freeform travel is as follows:
Find a hike or some other physical activity for the morning.
Travel for an hour or two or as desired.
Find a brewery and do some campsite and/or next day planning.
Settle in at the nights campsite by dinnertime.
The brewery component is essential! We found a free dispersed campsite on Forest Service land outside of Idaho Springs, CO. #2!! Even had to use the 4WD to get there.
Since we were just west of Denver, we decided to make the next day a travel day as we like to avoid staying in major metropolitan areas. We traversed eastern Colorado into Kansas to our Harvest Hosts campsite for the night, Shiloh Vineyard & Winery. 5 miles of dirt roads off I-70, we arrived to enjoy wine flights and some charcuterie from a local farm. I even made a friend!
BTW, she managed to make it into the van right after swimming in the pond. Clean up on aisle 5!
If you’ve ever traveled through Kansas, you’ll understand why we made the next day a travel day as well. I personally enjoy the farmland, monotonous as it may be. We stopped at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS to tour the Beach Museum of Art.
We proceeded on to Topeka, KS via backroads to our Harvest Hosts campsite for the night, Happy Basset Barrel House. Great place to watch playoff hockey over beer & wings. I even did some open mike stand up comedy before leaving!
We elected to push on to St. Louis, MO the next for a long weekend with our youngest daughter, who is working for the company that acquired my financial planning practice. I’ve been there for a couple of trips, but this would be Amy Jo’s first visit. A real bonus is the proximity of our daughter’s apartment to Forest Park. We were walking in the park every day we were there, visiting the Zoo, the St. Louis Art Museum and just generally enjoying the open space.
The museums and the zoo are free, however, the art museum had two paid exhibits; Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape and Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum. But……it was Free Friday!!!
For the balance of the weekend, we enjoyed some “urban hiking,” filling my daughter’s refrigerator and gas tank, Schlafly Beer, Brennan’s (my favorite whiskey bar,) Evangeline’s Bistro & Music House, Side Project Brewing, Heavy Riff Brewing Co (really good!!) and my favorite neighborhood dive bar, Rosie’s Place.
Next installment: St. Louis, MO to Shenandoah National Park