Las Animas County

We’re out camping again ... after a busy six days of appointments, errands, and prep work for this 5-day trip. This time we headed south from Colorado Springs to Lathrop State Park, which is about 3 miles from Walsenburg, Colorado.

Hopefully we won’t regret this outing. The temperature forecast is in the mid- to high-90F range for the duration of our stay. That may well put the kibosh on the outdoor activities that we were looking forward to enjoying. But at least we should have comfy temps in the mornings and late evenings so we can sit out for a bit and maybe have an al fresco meal or two.

We left the house just before 10:00a to pick up the Cruiser from storage. Twenty minutes later, we were on the road, following CO-21 and US-24 to hook up with I-25S. There was more traffic than we expected on a Sunday morning, but it was flowing, so no problem. About an hour into our drive, we ran into a short-lived rain shower that dropped the temp from about 85F to 69F, but the temperature rebounded within minutes and kept climbing.

Around 12:30p — with some 110 miles under our belt — we pulled into Lathrop State Park. Donning our face masks, we went into the visitor center to check in. Only three visitors are allowed inside at any one time. Luckily, there was only one other person ahead of us, so we didn’t have to wait around to complete the formalities.

The landscape at Lathrop, which is the oldest park in Colorado’s state park system — dating back to 1962 — is one of pinyon-juniper. I’m not a particular fan … especially not after being up in the majestic Rockies just last week. It would have been nice to get a site that has a view of the Spanish Peaks, but our selection of camping locations this summer is being driven by availability rather than personal preference. It is what it is and we’ll make the best of it.

We are in site 93 in the Piñon Campground. NO FHUs here. We’re especially glad we managed to snag one of the electric-only sites as we are definitely going to need to run the A/C quite a bit on this trip. The site is spacious … plenty of distance between us and our neighbors … nothing but grasses and trees on the patio side of the site. I do like that ... wide open space.

The one downside? No shade trees at this site. We’re keeping fingers crossed that the winds that are known to plague the area will be light enough that we can deploy the awning to make our own shade. And a beneficial rain shower or two — like the one that came through late this afternoon — to cool things down would not go amiss.

Not sure what we will be doing during our stay here. There is a hike within the park and a walk around Martin Lake, one of the two bodies of water in the park. We might manage those if we can get out early enough. We did the Highway of Legends when we stayed at Trinidad Lake State Park in 2015, so that’s out. There are a couple of other drives we’re considering, including one to Great Sand Dunes National Park. I guess we’ll just play it by ear.Baca selengkapnya