A while back we started a retirement truck camper list. Campers to consider if we wanted to move past the Four Wheel Camper Eagle, if we were living more full time on the road. Well, one of the campers on the list is actually available to rent from a place in Colorado (https://goexploreit.com/). A few months back we set aside a few days, hoping for fall colors and reserved the 2021 Tiger Bengal TX for four days of testing and exploring Colorado.
The folks at goexploreit were great to work with and provided everything we needed for the trip. They set us up for off road adventure and even provided maps and books with a suggested itinerary for the days we had available and what we were interested in. Tables, camp chairs, and ax and saw, winch, air down/up kit, tools, cooking utensils, everything. We’ll cover the truck in more detail in a future post. For now, we’ll get into the trip report. And of course if you want the video summary here it is:
We flew from Redmond to Denver first thing in the morning and arrived at Golden to pick up the Tiger mid-morning. After a run-down of the use of the truck and the systems in the camper we headed for the nearest grocery store. After we were all stocked up we headed towards Estes Park and spent the first night near there at Hermit Park Campground. This gave us a guaranteed location because we needed to be in Rocky Mountain National Park before 7 the next morning. RMNP was trying out a new timed entry system to spread out how many people were entering the park at any given time. Our appointed time was 5- 7 a.m. Yep, nowadays you can’t just drive into the park, just entering requires a reservation.
We were up early and into the park just as the first light was hitting the mountains.
We made our way up the Bear Lake Road, and it turned out the colors in the park were just about perfect.
We were on the trail before it got too crowded and found our way to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and Emerald Lake.
We headed down the trail and made our way towards Trail Ridge Road. Topping out at 12,183 feet, you are way up there.
We made our way west out of the park after a late lunch stop, then headed towards Stillwater Pass to find a spot to spend the night.
It turned out that most of the Stillwater Pass area burned in the East Troublesome fire in the fall of 2020. It was less than a year since the fire burned through the area, and there were lots of signs of erosion and other issues associated with this high severity fire. I’m not going to claim it was the most scenic part of the trip. On the up side, the aspen was 3-4 feet in height and it appears that in a few years this will be a great leaf peeping location. Since it was on the way to where we were headed we continued on and found a spot for the night. Our blue sky day turned to grey, and there was signs of snow on the peaks before we went to bed.
We woke to snow and headed south. Where were we headed? We’ll cover the rest of the trip in part 2.
