After our last trip to Salida, Chris and I made plans to return this weekend to catch the fall foliage. We timed it perfectly.
After spending all day Friday in the Springs looking at property, we drove to Salida for a couple of nights. We stayed at the Salida Inn and Monarch Suites. It was a bit older property, but gave us plenty of room to spread out.
We arrived in Salida after picking up some Chick-fil-A in CS (Colorado Springs) after it was already dark. It would have been awesome to see the beautiful canyon we drove through, but I imagine we will have plenty more opportunities for that in the future.
We slept in a bit on Saturday morning and then got ready to go for a hike to Boss Lake Reservoir up the Monarch Pass.
Chris wanted to drive up the 4-wheel drive road but after going a bit, I wasn't too thrilled about the road or about driving the Pilot on the road.
I made him back up down the hill. He wasn't pleased.
Instead, we climbed the 1.2 miles to the parking area and then an additional miles from the actual trailhead to the reservoir.
We had been listening to the Saturday morning session of General Conference but lost our signal once we started hiking.
The trail was strenuous but the trees and mountains were beautiful.
We finally reached the lake and stopped to enjoy a lunch along the shore. It was quite a busy destination with one person canoeing and lots of people fishing all around the lake.
We opted not to continue the additional one mile to Hunt's Lake and returned to our car.
If you have never driven through Monarch Pass in the fall, it is a must-do. We cut off of US 50 onto the unpaved Forest Road 237 also known as Old Monarch Pass at Sargents. That was awesome and so colorful. We passed quite a few vehicles coming the other direction.
Fortunately we were able to listen to the afternoon session of conference.