Sunday, September 20

The four of us were up bright and early this morning with big plans to spend the day in Aspen. It’s a gorgeous city with all the brightly-colored aspens changing from green to yellow this time of year, and what better way to see it than from a bird’s eye view. Andi and I wanted to treat the kids to a gondola ride in one of Colorado’s ski towns, and we decided Aspen Mountain was the perfect place to experience it.

We moved our RV out of our overnight campsite and into Difficult Campground’s day-use lot for the day, then hopped on our bikes and headed into Aspen on the scenic East Aspen Bike trail. Gosh, was it beautiful! September weather in Colorado is fall colors & summer temperatures. The air was brisk at the start of our bike ride this morning, but quickly warmed up with the sunshine. I wish I would have taken more photos of the fall colors on the bike trail, but we were too busy weaving in and out of the beautiful wooded trees and along the boardwalk to stop.

We arrived at the gondola in Aspen around 9:45am and purchased our lift tickets up the mountain. Tory and Aden have memories of riding a gondola in Grindelwald, Switzerland and Queenstown, New Zealand, and both were excited to ride one again.

Aspen Mountain opened at 10:00am and we were fortunate to practically have the place to ourselves. The views were incredible from that vantage point! i’m continually amazed by Colorado’s colorful landscape. Standing on top of Aspen Mountain looking into the distance felt like looking at a painting.

We had a little over 3 miles left to hike this week to meet our 12 miles/week family goal, so we set off to walk the nature trail. Temperatures were a lot colder than we’d expected them to be, but fortunately the kids didn’t complain. We were too busy huffing and puffing until our lungs acclimated to the altitude! Tory tripped and fell over a rock and cried at the beginning, too, but she bravely shook it off and kept on going. Once we hiked around the top of the mountain for 15 minutes, we all settled into a groove.

Andi packed us a picnic, and we found a beautiful look-out on the trail to sit and eat lunch. A few wind gusts sent our paper plates flying, but we still felt like we were on top of the world. The mountains have a way of making you feel that way.

After our hike, we made our way back to the gondola, and whoa— The lodge was packed! I’m not sure where all those people came from, but they weren’t there to hike. Lots of people eating and drinking at the top of the mountain. I’m so glad we came up to hike first-thing this morning.

Back down in downtown Aspen, we hopped on our bikes and rode the 4 miles back to Difficult Campground. Andi and I decided we didn’t want to spend a third night in Aspen, so we packed up the RV and hit the road. It was around 4:00pm.

We drove from Aspen to Glenwood Springs. Andi wanted to stop at Wal-Mart for a few things, one being an internet data card as we used up all the data on our phones within the first 10 days of the trip. Yikes.

After Wal-Mart, we attempted to hop on I-70 and drive east toward Breckenridge, but there was traffic backed up as far as we could see. What was going on??

We sat in traffic for 45 minutes, never moving more than a few feet of distance, before deciding this was ridiculous. We travel WITH our home! We can pull over anywhere and say uncle. Nothing is pulling us to Breckenridge tonight other than our desire to be somewhere new.

Andi did a quick search for camping options and found one called Ami’s Acres about a mile away. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any free dispersed camping near where we were.

Ami’s Acres Campground didn’t have any RV spots available, but they did have a tent camping site they said we could use — for $46/night! Ugh. This would be the most expensive camping spot we’ve paid for on this trip and honestly, that wasn’t getting us much but a campsite by the highway with electric and water. Andi and I considered driving another 40 minutes to a state park northwest of Glenwood Springs, but decided against it. It would be 40 minutes in the other direction from where we wanted to go tomorrow AND we’d still have to pay or the state park campsite which is usually around $25 without any services. Ami’s Campground it was. We backed in our rig to the campsite and called it a night. At least we weren’t sitting in traffic for hours.

Andi grilled sea bass for dinner and we decided to eat outside under this weird driftwood awning in our site. We had to laugh because this is RV Life. Some days we’re camping in epic spots, completely deserted from people with gorgeous landscape all around us & some days we end up spending the night at a RV Park eating next to a porta-potty. It’s all good.