This beautiful camping spot is just south of Leadville, and made for a very nice weekend. We came here last year in early June, and were rained on, a lot. Chilly. This year we're here in mid-July, extremely pleasant. Highs in the mid-70's, good sleeping weather. We're also coming back in early Septmeber, I'll let you know it is then ;-pWe stayed in the same campground, in the same loop as last year. It's a nice place, but I am not planning to go back to that same campground again (maybe to the FS campground up the road?).
Went back to a fishing spot on the lake where we had great success last year, and got NOT ONE nibble this year.
Maybe it was the rain that made it so great last year ;-p
After a lunch on a shady forest service road, we headed over to the Arkansas River to try more fishing (and some knitting). More success, but still not much.
Happy Camper.
Some dark clouds rolled in, plus some lightning, so we headed up towards Leadville to visit the Fish Hatchery (we are weird that way - John and I have visited many fish hatcheries around the country). What a pleasant surprise! We spent several hours here. Not only do they have runs outside with fish in different stages to view (and feed!) -
They have a beautiful building to tour with younger stages of fish. This historic building used to have wood arches and a catherdral ceiling, like a church.
The hatchery also included a nature trail, which went past several ponds where the fish were raised in the past, and had labelled trees, shrubs and wildflowers. Copius amounts of wildflowers were in bloom, many of which I had never seen before!
Runoff from the ponds. 
Did I mention I am using my old digital camera - my regular one stopped working for no obvious reason - this one has a lens issue - the lens is bent to one side, so the autofocus is off, the viewfinder no longer matches up to what is photographed, plus the camera has a battery useage issue. So none of my flowers were actually IN focus.One of the few that almost worked....
Nature trail.
One of the Evergreen Ponds.
Site of a resort hotel from the late 1800's.
Making the campfire back at camp.
Sunset!
Sunday morning the kids and I went for a hike to the edge of the lake. There are sand dunes! They found the jawbone of a small rodent.
Walking along the lake.
A little later, back with our swimming suits, exploring the lake. Very shallow to way out, here. at the point between the two halves of the lake (hence, the Twin Lakes).
The kids built a raft, but had no rope to lash it together - Elise is trying to hold it with her body!
Owen gave up on the raft and went snorkling - Elise is dealing with what is left of the raft.
Sunday after lunch, we decided to go 4-wheeling over a mountain pass with our newer-to-us 4-wheel drive Land Rover. We haven't done any official 4-wheeling yet (my low clearance Subaru has seen it's fair share of rough and rocky roads, though!). We started out in the town of Leadville, and John's GPS got us lost - on some bike trails more or less. What started out as a road ended up being a very narrow trail, that was not going the correct direction. We were so happy to find a paved road at one point - we drove up on it, went for a few hundred yards before seeing a sign telling us that no motorized vehicles were allowed! Ooops. We were on Leadville's nice bike trail system.... Hopped back onto an unpaved "trail" and drove back towards Leadville. We figure we got lost in Leadville's unofficial BMX park.
Found a more direct route to our pass, and started up. This route is rated a 2-3 in one book and moderate on another website. A friend told us that would be easy enough for most passenger cars - wrong! Right away we hit some rocks that would have easily blown our Subaru's tires and ripped out our radiator, and been a mess for any other regular car. Our truck was having no problems with any of it (using low gear, of course), but the "easy" part of the trail was constant 8-10" rocks (with some bigger) on a steep incline. Hmmm. After about 30 minutes of this, we stopped someone coming down and asked how long it took them, and they told us 1.5 hours. And it only got steeper from then on. For our own sanity we turned around. This was Mosquito Pass - which would have been great - the pass is at ~13,300 ft - supposedly the highest passable road in Colorado.
The valley behind us. 
Here is the link to our trip to this same area last year: Twin Lakes June 2009.
Nature trail.
One of the Evergreen Ponds.
Site of a resort hotel from the late 1800's.
Making the campfire back at camp.
Sunset!
Sunday morning the kids and I went for a hike to the edge of the lake. There are sand dunes! They found the jawbone of a small rodent.
Walking along the lake.
A little later, back with our swimming suits, exploring the lake. Very shallow to way out, here. at the point between the two halves of the lake (hence, the Twin Lakes).
The kids built a raft, but had no rope to lash it together - Elise is trying to hold it with her body!
Owen gave up on the raft and went snorkling - Elise is dealing with what is left of the raft.
Sunday after lunch, we decided to go 4-wheeling over a mountain pass with our newer-to-us 4-wheel drive Land Rover. We haven't done any official 4-wheeling yet (my low clearance Subaru has seen it's fair share of rough and rocky roads, though!). We started out in the town of Leadville, and John's GPS got us lost - on some bike trails more or less. What started out as a road ended up being a very narrow trail, that was not going the correct direction. We were so happy to find a paved road at one point - we drove up on it, went for a few hundred yards before seeing a sign telling us that no motorized vehicles were allowed! Ooops. We were on Leadville's nice bike trail system.... Hopped back onto an unpaved "trail" and drove back towards Leadville. We figure we got lost in Leadville's unofficial BMX park.
Found a more direct route to our pass, and started up. This route is rated a 2-3 in one book and moderate on another website. A friend told us that would be easy enough for most passenger cars - wrong! Right away we hit some rocks that would have easily blown our Subaru's tires and ripped out our radiator, and been a mess for any other regular car. Our truck was having no problems with any of it (using low gear, of course), but the "easy" part of the trail was constant 8-10" rocks (with some bigger) on a steep incline. Hmmm. After about 30 minutes of this, we stopped someone coming down and asked how long it took them, and they told us 1.5 hours. And it only got steeper from then on. For our own sanity we turned around. This was Mosquito Pass - which would have been great - the pass is at ~13,300 ft - supposedly the highest passable road in Colorado.The wildflowers were amazing up there.
We drove south to the next pass across - Weston Pass. A little longer, but rated easy by the one site and 1-2 by that other book. I guess it was easy by most 4-wheeling standards, but my Subaru would NOT have done the west side of the pass. Too many big rocks. The east side was definitely easy, we have done much harder things in my Suby. The drive was also beautiful, and well worth it.
I don't think I am cut out to be a 4-wheeler. Or I am a level 1-2 4-wheeler max.
The valley behind us. 
Here is the link to our trip to this same area last year: Twin Lakes June 2009.
