Kayaking- Ichetucknee River

 58 degrees, North entrance to South entrance, 9.76 miles, 3:06 paddling time

We had not intended to do a long paddle today, but the South gate was locked today. We rode around, hoping to find another put in with no luck so today we put in at the north entrance of the state park and paddled to Highway 129 boat ramp. We did notice that at the put in there was a new ramp installed - this is always nice. 

The beginning of this river has a good flow, but the last 4 miles the river becomes very wide and still after not paddling for so long. I definitely could feel my arms. As usual the river was beautiful and we were lucky enough to see about seven manatees. it was a good start to our Florida 2025 paddle adventure.

Bike Ride - O’Leno State Park

 It was an easy drive from the brewery down to O’Leno State Park. We set up in Site 19 and had a lunch of spinach dip and veggies and crackers and cheese.

After lunch, we went on a 16 mile bike ride on a trail that led from the park over to Fort White. We didn’t make it that far as my ears were getting cold. Ha ha.

Camp - Folk Lore Brewing

 We left Clarksville with a temperature of 21 degrees. We stopped to get our trailer’s annual check up - all good, and then to Buccees. No camping trip in Tennessee is complete without a stop at Buccees!

Next stop, Folk Lore Brewing & Meadery. Now, at 7:40, we have a temperature of 27 degrees! This is a Harvest Host location and for $15, we connected to electricity. We each had a wheat beer - delicious! And we split a pretzel with beer cheese, and I finished up my Buccees salad. 

Hiking - Garden of the gods

 We woke to temperatures of 31° so we quickly got dressed. Scotty drained the gray water and black water and unhooked our water hose. We then drove over to Garden of the Gods and drove around and did just 2 short hikes there. Garden of the gods was donated in 1909 by the children of Charles Elliott Perkins. It was his wish that the land be free forever for the public to visit the rock formations here were unlike others. We have already seen on this trip. It’s like they just popped up out of nowhere. There are huge towering rocks to walk around. It’s very interesting and beautiful. 

We returned to the campsite and readied the camper for the drive. We packed a lunch to take in the truck and we were off by 10:45. The temperature had reached 40 degrees, And although we had a reservation for one more night, we didn’t want to risk being in a cold rainstorm or worse a snowstorm.

nne Mountain State Park

 As we packed up to leave the great Sand dunes, we saw a family of deer in the grass below us. They eventually worked their way up towards us, and we thought it was a good sendoff.

We got to Cheyenne Mountain State Park and parked the camper. We also parked ourselves inside as it was very, very windy, 30 mph winds. We both agreed it was kind of nice just to hang out in the camper and relax. late in the afternoon, we did decide to take a small hike and we hiked from our camper down the mountain and then back up the road for almost 2 miles. Today smust’ve been a day for deer. We saw three groups of deer along our walk. They did not seem a really, really scared of us. In fact one group of deer almost seem to follow us for a while. 

About 6 o’clock, we realized that the next day cold snowy weather was predicted. Rather than camp one more night on the mountain, we will head over to Garden of the gods, Drive the main loop and then make a decision from there. Most likely, we will hook up the camper drive down the mountain and start heading home.

Hiking - Great Sand Dunes

 Today was a lovely drive across Colorado. We could see snow topped mountains to the east getting closer and closer. We did see some fall color, but I think we probably missed the peak colors by a week or two. We stopped for lunch at the Continental divide which was an interesting and very cold stop. 

The hour drive into the Great Sand Dunes was interesting as it was a big valley surrounded by mountains on all four sides and potato fields immediately around us. I’ve said before that every national park is very unique and great. Sandunes did not disappoint. The dunes of sand are huge and cover quite a bit of distance from east to west we walked from the parking lot out to the dunes, but did not go up into the dunes. It was the toughest we’ve had so far - walking in the sand was not easy and the sand was blowing very hard. Apparently, it is a 3 mile hike up to the highest dune. We got there late so we couldn’t do it and to be quite honest I don’t think I’d ever want to do it.

 From there, we headed over to the Montville Nature Trail and part of the Mosca Pass Trail. The trail was lined with pinon pine trees and we collected some nuts.

We headed back to Pinon Flats Campground. This campground has no water and electricity but a fantastic view of the sand dunes. We had a dinner of cheese and crackers and even a beer. Scotty ran the generator for about half an hour during which time we ran our heater to warm up the trailer. We pulled out blankets to ready ourselves for the night.

Biking/Hiking - Mesa Verde

 Our campground is directly outside of the national park and we have a great view of the Mesa from our campsite. We went into the national park directly to the visitor center. I think this is one of the prettier visitor centers we have seen it is designed so that when you walk into the front door, you can see the Mesa directly above it. As it is autumn, there  lots of fall colored plants surrounding the building and we could also see snow covered mountains in the distance. What I did not like was the drive from the visitors to Mesa loop. There are some steep drop offs from the road which I tried not to look at.

On our way to our first hike, we passed a sign that said fry bread. We had been looking for Frybread on this trip and just hadn’t had the opportunity.This was the perfect place. There is actually land set aside for a Ute reservation here.A Navajo woman cooked up the Frybread for us there and told us how she had learned to make it from her grandmother. It’s actually very simple. It is just flower baking soda, and water that fries in oil can be served with salt, or sweet. We chose sweet her husband, Michael is a Ute man and he used to do backpacking tours. As we sat at our Frybread, he told us some history of the Ute people and how they migrated from Mesa Verde to other locations. 

We first hiked the soda Canyon Trail, which is an easy loop trail about a mile long. It goes through paths lined with pinion trees, cacti, small shrubs, and rocks. There are overlooks where we could see the balcony house and other cliff dwellings. 

We went to the museum, where we saw many pottery, artifacts, and pieces of past relics.One of the things that most impressed me in this museum were the little pieces of pottery that had been returned to the national park with notes from people saying they regretted taking the pieces and new that they really belong to the park and to themselves. We had a bunch of snack foods outside the museum and then got onto our bikes.

There is a 6 mile round-trip loop called the Mesa loop ( a mile from the museum) so we did a total of 8 miles. I had previously downloaded an audio tour and as we stopped at the 11 stops, we could hear information about each stop. It was really a well done tour and audio tape. We saw Cliff dwellings and we were even able to walk near previous dwellings. We could see the changes over the years as the dwellings got more advanced , and the Kivas got more advanced. A kiva is A social gathering place for several families within a community. 

We returned to our campsite and took showers in the camp Bathhouse. We took especially long hot showers as these were the nicest bathrooms we had seen on our trip. They looked fairly new and they were large, tiled and definitely very clean.