Steamboat Springs

John Holzworth was an enterprising man. He setup a homestead in the Colorado river valley just outside the Rocky Mountain National Park, early in this century. Amongst other things he provided rich town folk with authentic western experience by renting little cottages to them where they could stay for a few days or weeks taking part in 'real' cowboy, farming, horse riding activities at his Dude range. It seems that Johns ventures were quite successful and when he sold his property in 1972 to the National Park Service for over a million dollars, he did this under the condition that his original homestead was preserved and turned into an exhibit. Thus today people can learn all about John, his parents and siblings at the Never Summer Range near the west entrance of the Rock Mountain National Park.

Yesterday Regula and I agreed to do the cooking ourselves, while camping instead of going out every night. So today we visited several stores, updating our gear and supplies to be able to cook our own meals without causing fires or dying of malnutrition.

Oh yea, and the title. My hopes were high for Steamboat Springs, after all the rave reviews I read in my Lonely Planet guide. But driving through the town and then not finding the hyped KOA on the other side left us so totally non thrilled, that we decided to skip Steamboat and go straight to the Dinosaur National Monument. So tonight we stay at the (hype hype) most beautiful Green River Campground near Dinosaur Quarry.