May 24th - Out and about in Colorado: Aspen and beyond

Aspen.

Will’s follow-up dentist appointment, then we hit the road for Aspen. It took about 2 hours to get there. It was starting to get overcast when we got there. We were cold, but obviously the locals didn’t think so, as we had big coats on and they were just in normal clothes – some in t-shirts! Went to the Roots shop where I bought a cute Aspen t-shirt. We went to where the lifts go from and took some pics of the gondolas. It started to get pretty dark, but we went down to the visitor info place for some postcards, but they didn’t have any, only a tiny place with lots of brochures. Then on our walk back we spotted a ‘free carpet sample’ pile in the front yard of a shop. We sneaked up the path and had two samples (with the edges all sewn nicely like mats), when the front door opened and the lady who came up with some other people said we could take as many as we liked! She said for pets, cars, homes… we thought of Betsey! We’d just been saying we needed a doormat type thing for her as our shoes always make a mess of the carpet. There were four piles of these mat things, each about a metre and a bit high. So we took quite a few! Made our day and we giggled about it all the way back to the car. Thanks Jill’s Carpets of Aspen! One of the carpets is even made of wool from NZ!! (thus prob not very good quality hehe). 

More Aspen. 

Then we headed back up the road to Aspen, back to Carbondale with lots and lots of traffic and rain. We drove down south and admired the views of snowcapped mountains and deer in paddocks. We were aiming to camp at Bogan Flats (Will loves the name!) campground, but it didn’t have a sign so we accidentally missed it and continued up a mega hill with several incredible hairpin turns. Ended up at a Paonia State Park campground on a lake. We were the only people camping there - $10 for exclusive rights to a campground!

As we were getting settled in our new campspot, Will saw two deer munching their way past Betsey. I moved too quickly getting the camera, unfortunately, and they bolted. They were adorable though.