Granddaughters’ Visit (June 6 – June 13)

Following one of our granddaughter’s high school graduations and another granddaughter’s birthday, it was time for a celebration for both of our beautiful, smart granddaughters. They rode back to Creede, Colorado with us.  It was a longer than usual drive, about 15 hours, due to the rainstorms that hit us towards the last part of our trip. Needless to say, we all were very tired after arriving at 11:30 pm.

By 11:00 am the next day, we were up and ready to get started for our week of fun!  It started with a drive to South Fork to pick up our side-by-side (SxS/UTV) out of winter storage. Both girls are licensed drivers and they were especially looking forward to driving the off-road mountain trails.

We were concerned because rain and cooler temperatures were predicted for most of the week.  Fortunately, we had only one evening of sleet and heavy rainfall just as we returned to the RV from a UTV ride. The rest of the week only brought occasional short showers and that did not stop us from our outdoor activities.

This is our third season at Mountainview RV Resort (MVR).  The first season was in 2021 and towards the end of the season for about 4 weeks (August 14 – September 12), the second season we were here for a full season (May through the end of September), and 2023 is now our third season. For the first time, we finally floated the Rio Grande River on a raft float trip with the girls. 

June is supposedly the best time to float the river because of all the snow melt flowing down from the mountains creating a river that is high and fast flowing.  In our younger years, we would have felt comfortable handling a raft and taking our children out on our own, but there was no way we were going to attempt managing this high, fast-flowing river with the grandchildren on our own.  We paid for a guided tour out of South Fork that included not only the guide and raft but also included water booties to keep our shoes dry and splash gear that helped in keeping our clothes from getting too wet.  The raft river ride was a lot of fun!  The girls sat behind us in the middle and kept the driest, it was unfortunate that we could not see their faces and could only hear their laughs.  Thankfully by prepaying for photos, which were taken by a photographer on shore that followed us along our river route, we got lots of good shots that nicely reflected the fun we shared.

Freemon’s freemonsranch.com is highly recommended for their horseback rides and they are famous for their homemade hamburgers that have been written up as being the best around, confirmed by the lines of people waiting to order.  We scheduled a 1-hour horseback ride through the beautiful open mountainous fields along the Rio Grande River where we thoroughly enjoyed the scenery of beautiful yellow dandelions in full bloom.  The day was beautiful, temperatures perfect and it was a good ride that we all enjoyed.  It was a ride we almost missed because when we were halfway to the stables, Lily realized she was wearing her slides and we knew she would not be able to ride horseback in slides, so we had to turn around, go back to the RV for her to change shoes, thankfully we were still able to make it to the stables in time for our ride.  Addi had a really good laugh over Lily’s shoe incident, she kept chuckling over it.  Afterward, we enjoyed lunch and those famous burgers at Freemon’s General Store. 

• Addi riding Sierra
• Lily riding Denny
• Nana riding Sugar
• Papa riding Trigger
• Aaron was our rangler from Oklahoma

North Clear Creek Falls Waterfalls (southfork.org) is a beautiful waterfall, a close drive from Freemon’s, and one we have enjoyed visiting in the past, so we took the girls to visit after lunch.   There is a nice SxS driving trail (Bristol Head Mountain) across from the Falls, which we have taken several times. The ride requires you to trailer the UTV to a staging area. Unfortunately, Bristol Head was closed due to the heavy winter snow that Creede experienced this year.   We also learned that several other of our favorite trails were closed during the girls’ visit due to the harsh winter.  Not to worry though, the Creede area has dozens, if not hundreds, of good SxS and jeep trails.

Creede’s downtown offers an underground mining museum and next door is the Mineral County Fire Department which is built into the base of a mountain cave and is a working fire department with old fire trucks on display.  The girls did not take the mining museum tour, but they had a fun time taking pictures with the old fire trucks.

We took SxS trail rides for several days.  Thankfully, our good friend and neighbor allowed us to borrow his two-seater for us to drive and we could then let the girls take turns driving our two-seater.   We rode up Bachelor Loop on the first day, but we could not take the off-shoot trail that continues up to the Continental Divide because that part of the upper trail was closed.  It did not matter to Addi and Lily, they had a great time driving the rocky, steep, rough terrain, which is so different from anything they had done before.  Another day the four of us drove an almost full-day ride to Love Lake where we met up with another large family.   The family we met up with were mostly driving ATV four-by-fours, with only a few driving an SxS.   However, even with the large group of us all attempting to find the beautiful Love Creek Waterfall near Love Lake, we were not successful in locating the Falls.  Our family of fellow riders then invited us to join them in town for hotdogs, but we declined.

The girls’ absolute favorite SxS ride was one taken with our good friends, Terry & Sue Cooprider.   We followed them up a long trail that was pretty steep, rough, and sometimes angled to a steep tilt to the top of McKenzie Mountain.  This was at an elevation of 11,000 ft., the town of Creede is 8,799 ft.  We stopped awhile at a meadow at the top for beautiful views of snow-top mountains and we even had snow flurries while up at the peak!

Once a year, Creede is host to the annual Donkey Dash! Donkey Dash (creede.com) We missed it last year and were happy to take the girls to this event for our first-time experience.   Competitors take their donkey by a rope/lead and race up to Bachelor’s Loop (SxS trail) 10 miles, turn around, and come back down into town. Racers work to qualify for 1st, 2^nd, and 3^rd places in the race.  We were late for the start-off but were able to see the winners roll back into town.    You know you are country when you compete in a donkey dash.

Creede’s Repertory Theatre Creede Repertory Theatre – Award-Winning Quality Productions is quite good.  They have been written up in the NY Times for their excellent live performances.   The girls were interested in seeing a new comedy “Clue on Stage” which is based on the board game Clue that we often play with the grandchildren.  We purchased tickets for the Saturday night performance which was about sold out, the only seats left were in the balcony and we were fortunate to get the last four seats.   Addi and Lily laughed and laughed, they repeatedly expressed how much they enjoyed it.

On our last full day with the girls, we drove to Pagosa Springs.   On the way, we took a drive through the Rio Grande National Forest – Platora jeep trail.  It’s a nice drive that we have taken a few times by trailering our SxS, then driving it with a UTV, but you can also drive certain areas with a truck/automobile. After spending some time taking pictures in the beautiful fields carpeted with bright yellow dandelions, we continued our drive to Pagosa. 

We all brought our swimsuits with plans to spend a few hours soaking in the natural hot springs offered in the area; however, after having lunch at the Junction Restaurant which was quite delicious, we decided to leave the girls to enjoy a swim at the hot springs pool at Healing Waters Resort while the two of us did a little needed Walmart shopping.   On the ride back to Creede, we stopped along the highway just outside Pagosa to take a close look at Treasure Falls which is a nice, easy to get to scenic stop. We took a few pics and then continued back to our campsite thus ending a long but very full and fun day.

Girls having fun around the RV Park

UTV trail rides to many mountain destinations, horseback riding, opening night for a new comedy play, Bingo at the Elks lodge, Hot Spring soaking in Pagosa, and riding the rapids down the Rio Grande river, it had been a very busy week full of adventures and one that we thoroughly enjoyed with Addison and Lily.  They flew home on Tuesday, June 13 on a connecting flight out of Alamosa CO (about 60 miles from Creede) to Denver then Dallas/Ft. Worth.  Their parents picked up the two tired teenagers after their late 11:30 pm arrival.  We know that after a few days, we will begin to miss them very much.

Shahn shared this photo he took of the girls late night arrival at DFW airport.

Proverbs 17:6: Grandchildren are the crown of old men, and the glory of children are their fathers.