For this year’s Colorado adventure, otherwise known as All-4-Fun, we once again found ourselves in the small town of Empire. This sleepy little community is about 40 miles West of Denver and sits right at 8600ft elevation. Several months back, I put the bug in OG’s ear about my yearly trek (since 1979!!) to this part of the country to attend the A4F event, and he submitted his registration and was accepted! Plans were made, vehicles were prepped, and the trip came to life…
We left Twin Falls around 8am on Wednesday, July 25th:
That afternoon we found ourselves in Dinosaur National Park, enjoying a nice little camping spot and soaking in the cool air after several hours in the rolling Casa de la Wilcox:
Thursday morning we eased out of the camping area and on up to the main visitors center and quarry to let the kids get a look at some real dinosaur fossils. I was excited to share this with my kids because my parents had taken me to Dinosaur NP back when I was my sons age. Pretty cool.
After leaving Dinosaur NP around lunch time, we headed East on US 40 and eventually stopped for the evening in Granby, CO at a beautiful campground overlooking Granby Lake, just South of the entrance to Rocky Mountain NP. If you ever have the opportunity to drive US 40 through this county, I highly recommend it, although perhaps not with a motorhome/trailer/Jeep…
Friday morning, after a leisurely walk along the shores and some breakfast, we continued along US 40 to finally reach our home for the week, Empire CO. Here we are patiently awaiting the dollop of Moss family to join us:
Saturday afternoon, OG and crew arrived and the game was officially on. My sister-in-law came up from Denver for the evening (that’s here Acura SUV), and my dad had come by camp for a quick visit. The white XJ lineup was quite amusing:
So, the way this event works is that each evening, you sign up for a run for the following morning. The runs are typically posted around 6pm, and there are about 10-12 runs to choose from ranging in difficulty from 2 through 8 (out of 10), with scenery designations from 4-8 (also out of 10), so you can mix/match your tastes for any given day. Jim and I have been wheeling literally our entire lives, so the difficulty factor wasn’t really what we were after – rather we wanted to take in the true experience and share it with our families. As such, we spent the majority of the week on 6-rated trails, with the notable exception being the Spring Creek trail, rated an 8, which we ran on Thursday. From here forward I will mainly post pics of the various days runs, with a few notable comments where necessary…
