Twin Lakes To Dillon Lake, CO

After our stay in Colorado Springs, we moved back into the mountains just ~35 miles north of where we’d been previously near Buena Vista.

I found a boondocking spot overlooking Twin Lakes that is going to be hard to beat. This was free dispersed camping in the San Isabel National Forest off county road 24 at an elevation of 9,700ft! We had unbelievable views of the lakes and the highest peak in Colorado, Mount Elbert (14,439ft). The flip side was this was the worst spur road we’ve ever taken the trailer on and I spent the week wondering how we were going to get out. But of course, Michael maneuvered us out without any problems.

Unfortunately, we never got to put our kayaks on Twin Lakes. The weather in Colorado is really not matching our schedule. The mornings always start out with blue skies but by the afternoon, it’s windy and cloudy with the threat of rogue thunderstorms all around.

Twin Lakes is an old resort town, once visited by the wealthy of Leadville and Aspen during the mining heydays. You can walk through some of the buildings of the Interlaken Resort with a ~4-mile round-trip hike.

The town of Twin Lakes is tiny but nearby Leadville had almost anything we needed. Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the US at 10,152 ft.

In Leadville, we went on a shopping spree at Melanzana, an appointment-only store that sews their fleece shirts in the same room that you shop.

From Twin Lakes, we drove one of Colorado’s most scenic drives, across the continental divide at Independence Pass to Aspen.

We made a day of it by doing a couple of hikes on the Aspen side of the pass.

Originally, we had hoped to visit Rocky Mountain National Park the following week but found out the campground I wanted to book is closed this season for renovations. Instead, we decided to visit the area near Breckenridge.

We stayed at Prospector Campground in Dillon, one of several National Forest dry camping campgrounds surrounding the Dillon Reservoir. We were still living very high here at 9,100ft and were surprised at how long it was taking our lungs to adjust! We couldn’t see the lake from our site but had nearly 360-degree views of the mountains. The campground was popular on the weekends but very quiet during the week.

We really liked this area. In addition to the views at the campground, the lake is surrounded by the very nice towns of Dillon, Silverthorne, and Frisco. And Breckenridge is 15 minutes south.

We particularly liked the town of Frisco and enjoyed their Thursday night music series. It was just as cute as Brekenridge but a lot less touristy.

Afternoon thunderstorms continued to be a problem this week. We now understand why Coloradans start their long hikes at 4 am. We thought that it was just to get a parking spot at trailheads, but it’s actually to be back below the treeline before the thunderstorms roll in.

We were able to squeeze in hikes on the Mount Royal (ran down to avoid a storm) and Ptarmigan (got rained on) trails.

This wraps up our visit to Colorado and we’re off to Wyoming!