Sunday, July 16, 2006
Elk Creek Trail Head near Horca, CO - July 12-15
This also was not our original destination -- we planned to camp at Aspen Glade NFS campground, where we camped in 2004 right before going to Lathrop. This time we reversed our course, but when we got there, we found that all but three sites were "reservable" and booked, and the non-reservable sites were taken. Friends Richard & Doug had told us about a boondocking spot they stayed at just a few miles up the road, so we headed there and found it without any difficulty (although we would not have been bold enough to seek it out on our own). 
We parked in the middle of a large meadow with a couple of older rigs nearby, one of whom left later that day. When Doug was unhooking the trailer, he found, much to his chagrin, that one of the landing legs (which support the trailer in the front) would not retract all the way, meaning that we could not get level front-to-back. An impromptu trip to Chama was quickly planned for the next day, where we discovered Dave's Trailer Repair. Dave was mainly used to working on horse trailers, but they use the same brand of landing legs, so he was quite familiar with them; not only that, he was willing to drive the 35 miles over a pass in order to work on our trailer! But since we were coming to Chama for the entire next week, we decided to have the replacement parts overnighted to Dave & he could work on our trailer in Chama then.
The first two nights boondocking were quiet, peaceful and pleasant. The third day, we hiked a few miles up Elk Creek, enjoyed a picnic lunch, and hiked back to find that a group of tenters and a trailer had moved in. They proceed to play "dueling stereos" until all hours of the night for the next two nights, and drive ATVs up and down the road to the restroom during the day. Why people go to quiet, remote areas and then have to make as much noise as possible escapes us.# posted by Doug and Willie @ 12:37 PM 
