Aspen, CO Overland / Camping Trip

Sharing a quick recap of two weekends ago out near Aspen. We departed from Denver Saturday morning and made our first stop in Buena Vista, one of our favorite towns in Colorado. We hopped out at the park & enjoyed some live music thanks to an event that the library had coordinated. The band was really good & Theo got to enjoy a dip in the a calm area of the river, which was absolutely surging with water. All the land (at the least the land I've seen) in Colorado right now is saturated with mountain snow melt. Its stunning.

After hanging at the park for a while, we made a pit stop at a local deli and enjoyed a couple delicious sandwiches, some potato salad, and a Dale's Pale Ale.

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We then made our way to Twin Lakes where we saw some of the recent fire damage that took approximately 600 to 800 acres of beautiful landscape due to a fire not being put completely out. A friendly reminder to make sure your fires are 100% out before leaving your campsite!! We also captured a "then and now" photo of us with Theo. We took him out to Twin Lakes when he was a pup and we thought it'd be fun to snag the same photo now that he's full grown. After the pit stop, we began making our way up and over Independence Pass. What an absolutely epic road. It used to be the highest paved road in CO, but was surpassed by Mount Blue Sky Road once it was paved.

To get to camp, we followed an unpaved, but pretty nicely graded road for about 6 miles. We rolled into camp later in the afternoon and got setup, took a small hike, let Theo splash around in the lake, and proceeded to make dinner & hang around the campfire. What an epic day.

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Sunday morning we woke up and made coffee and breakfast, broke down camp, and hopped in the truck to drive further up the mountain road and reach the trail head. Both the drive up and the hike were stunning. We will certainly be making our way back to this area for more camping and hiking!

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Wow, great trip, great pics. Great looking doggo. Thanks for sharing.

 

This deli?

 

Awesome, nice pictures! Colorado looks like a beautiful state, never been there or anywhere west of the Mississippi. That might change with my trip to CA next year.

 

Looks like a blast!

 

Thank you for taking the time to read! Appreciate the kind words!

 

No, we ate at Sorelles in BV actually, but we’ll have to give that place a try next time we’re around the Aspen area!

 

Thank you! And yes, Colorado is absolutely incredible. A must visit in my opinion!

 

i've gotten some grub at that deli in the past, its nothing more than a shack on the side of the road LoL
closed on Sunday, though
price seemed to be 'reasonable' for the Aspen area

 

beautiful pictures. Colorado is definitely on my list to visit. Thanks for sharing

 

How difficult is that trail? I plan to visit that area hopefully this fall. I'm a novice wheeler at best, so don't want anything too technical.

 

Thank you! Colorado is incredible - I definitely recommend making a trip to visit. So many amazing places to explore & be outdoors; it's seriously world class! Appreciate you reading along & the kind words

 

Not difficult at all! It gets more rocky the further you go past the campsite, but a Subaru could do. It'd be a great trail for you!

 

Great Info! Thanks

 

Dropping a few more favorites from this trip, which have just been sitting on my phone.

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Did you happen to go anywhere in the prince creek/ crown rec area south of Carbondale? I'm headed out there to mountain bike on Friday and am unsure about dispersed camping there. BLM shows a couple small campgrounds as first come first serve, but a little more difficult to find info on dispersed

edit 10/15/2024:
There were 2 camp grounds on prince creek road. one spot had 4 or 5 sites and 1 group site, where we ended up staying. This was right at the base of one of the dirt roads (the crown 8320 according to trail forks) that led into the BLM area. We biked up this road as it led to the trails. There was 1, maybe 2 dispersed spots on this road before we got to the cutoff for undie to father of ginormous. A tacoma could have easily handled it, but a friend was in a van. this campground was full and people were driving through into the night looking for a spot friday and saturday night.

The other a little to the east had 4 or 5 spots that seemed big enough for RVs. We skipped this one but only saw 1 vehicle down there.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have any good recommendations in the Carbondale area. I’m sorry man!

 

Oh wow, thanks for sharing.
Inspiring, beautiful pix.
And the truck looks the part, too.
Where do you store the food at night?

 

Of course! Thanks for reading. When we're at established campgrounds with bear lockers, we use those. When we are dispersed camping we store it in the cab of the truck and lock it.