After leaving Pigeon Forge and the family reunion, we stopped over at Jane's sister's in the Nashville Area before going to visit our daughter and her family in Grand Junction, CO. We spent most of August there before going on a Labor Day camping trip to the Soap Creek Horse Corral in the Gunnison National Forest.
The Soap Creek area provides a variety of camping experiences from dispersed camping to fee required campgrounds that offer picnic tables, a fire ring and vault toilets. We picked the Soap Creek Horse Corral for our camping experience. We arrived a little before the weekend on Thursday to make sure we could get a decent spot since reservations aren't an option and the area is first come, first served. Here is the camper at the site before our daughter's family arrived early Friday evening.
And here is the site after my daughter's family arrival. In words, we had plenty of room and the Soap Creek was just on the other side of the road.
The horse corral area was about a half mile off Soap Creek Road. I returned to Soap Creek road for some exploration and after rejoining the road I got a bird's eye view of the camping area as shown below. I would classify the climate as semi-arid. There were some forested areas such as those by the various flowing creeks in the area but also areas covered by desert brush.
My grandson's enjoyed playing in the Soap Creek and even did a little wading in a shallow swimming hole. The daily air temperature swing was around 45 degrees with daytime highs in the low 80s and nighttime lows in the mid-30s. So the creek water temperature was brisk.
There were hiking trails in the area. One trail was to Bonfisk Peak. We only did a one mile trek on the eight mile trail to the peak. Bonfisk Peak is about 11,600 feet above sea level whereas the campground elevation was about 7700 feet.
On my exploration of Soap Creek road past the campground I found one very nice dispersed camping spot. It was semi-secluded and gave a good views of the valley's western ridge. I was standing on the edge of Soap Creek Road when I took the picture.
We will visit our Colorado daughter's family for a couple more weeks before heading east to visit my sister and Virginia daughter's family, both in the Richmond area.
Horse Trailers
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