Me and You and a Dog Named Boo: On The Road Again in Maxine-First: Meeting the Dyerdings at Steamboat Lake

We left Boulder for Steamboat Lake State Park, north of Steamboat Springs on the 16th of June. The ride down I25 into Denver and 70 West to Silverthorne is always a white knuckle trip for me, though Jim, of course, is just fine with the traffic and the mountain passes. As soon as we turned north on Rte 9, I could feel myself relaxing and getting into life on the road mode. This route goes through the beautiful Blue River Valley, which we visited last year. We went through Steamboat Springs without stopping this time and headed up the valley following the river north. We unhooked the CRV at The Roadhouse, which must be infamous for something. Looks like they have horseback rides, ATV guided tours, and a funny little collection of businesses-fishing and hunting gear, camping supplies, a sandwich shop, a saloon which had entertainment on Thursday and Saturday nights and a gas and propane station. We found our usual wonderful spot right on the lake and had a night to ourselves before Meg and Chris and the kids came up to join us right next door. We had planned this trip for a long time-camping with the Dyerdings, as we call them, is always a highlight of our summer.

Boo, settling in for a summer on the road.

This is Jimbo on Father's Day. They have added shade
structures since last year. Can you ask for a better view?
It feels so good to be here.

Just adore sage! And we have a whole hill of it in front of us.

Early morning calm on the lake

We are seeing paddle boards everywhere. I'm sorry I'm
too old for that-looks like fun.

Sunsets are glorious here.

The boys, hangin' out in Maxine.

Of course, we had to put up our sun shade, too, so we
had several rooms. And I think we may have been outdone
by Meg and Chris who had two sun shades. One for
playing games (with a game table and wooden chairs
to match) and the other for viewing. They even had
an oriental rug, albeit, probably not a real one! There
were a couple games of Five Crowns and an amazing
jigsaw puzzle that was actually completed!

Meg, checking on dinner plans.

Jameson chilling

Boo really liked Jameson and the feeling was mutual.

Meg and Jameson and I took a hike one afternoon
while the others went fishing. It rained on us a little,
but we loved the hike anyway. We saw lots of wild-
flowers and a few deer. There was even a little
cemetery plot at the top of the hill.

Love the name of their fishing boat! "Patience"

Chris and Jameson

caught two huge "cut bow" (cutthroat/rainbow) trout

which I prepared with the old, famous (because we

first had it on a backpacking trip with John Denver

and he was going to put it in a camp cookbook he was

working on when he died) " Trout (pronounced,

Trootay) in a Pouch (pronounced pooshay)"-foil wrapped

combo of onions, garlic, lemon, herbs, wine topping and

stuffing the trout.

Aren't they beautiful? The trout AND the fishermen!

Meg and Julianna giggling before breakfast on their last day
at camp.

When they left, we spent another night at Steamboat Lake and then went up to Hahn's Peak Campground for the weekend, which was only a few miles up the road, almost on the Wyoming border. We hiked the trail around the lake and went kayaking there.