Trinidad Lake State Park – Trinidad, Colorado
After leaving Texas, we headed west through New Mexico and took the Raton Pass up into Colorado. Raton Pass was our first real opportunity to see how our bus would perform on real grades and higher elevation. It wasn’t great – we chugged along at 20 mph for the steepest parts of the pass nearest to the top and spent the night at Raton Pass Camp & Cafe at the peak.
Trinidad Lake State Park is nicely maintained, but somewhat busy state park. Our stay spanned both the weekend and weekdays so we got to see the park during both times. Weekends are packed which meant a lot of families, small children, dogs, noise, and some late-night parties. Come Monday the campground empties out and becomes peaceful and quiet. There wasn’t any real shade at our campsite, so we were able to test out our air conditioner in real summer heat. Despite it reaching the 90’s during the hottest parts of the day, our AC kept the interior of the bus comfortably cool. Thank goodness we installed it!
Fishing and boating are the main activities here, though there is also deer hunting in part of the park. Since we’re not hunters, we opted to purchase fishing licenses instead. As we’re expecting to spend quite a bit of time in Colorado this summer, we elected to buy the full-year license, which at $60 per person, had better pay off in trout. Sadly, nothing seemed to be biting in Trinidad, though maybe we’ll have more luck at our next stop.
We were fortunate in that we had two hiking trails accessible directly from our site – one short (1 mile scenic loop), and another longer (4-8 mile rigorous trail). This was really convenient as the cats are still adjusting to walking on leashes and aren’t really that comfortable being in foreign terrain yet, so having access to a in sight of the bus the bus seemed to help them feel calmer.
Given the awesome internet connection, we spent a few days alternately getting work done and going for hikes/ bike rides/ and fishing in the evenings. We were even able to get a bit of laundry done as it turns out that the park has an on-site laundry room.
The view from the campground.
Evening fishing.
The view from the campground.
Sunsets!
We Got Schooled 