We just completed a leaf peeping drive in Colorado. We headed southwest from Fort Collins to the upper Rio Grande valley near Creede in our 2013 Tundra and 2017 Hallmark Milner. We found the last campsite east of Creede on Wednesday at 3PM. This was the harbinger of things to come as far as camping was concerned. COVID-19 and the fires and smoke in CA brought out hordes of campers. There are a number of boondock sites in the Creede area if you know where to go. The easiest if up the Loop drive clockwise and go up only about a mile where there is a road on the left with nice flat overview spots of the area.
We then continued NW over Spring Creek Pass. Lots of golden aspens and a number of potential boondock sites. The views overlooking Lake City from the viewing pull off were excellent. We then drove to Gunnison and to Crested Butte. The aspen views about 10 miles south of Crested Butte were excellent. Then we drove over Kebler Pass hoping to find either a certified campsite or boondock site. It was too crowded, even for boondock sites and the road was dusty with all the traffic, and the aspen views not that great.
So we headed north over McClure Pass hoping to find a campsite and then tried near Marble, all full. Finally we found the last site at the Redstone National Forest CG. That is the first time we camped there and it is very pretty with the red stones cliffs above and aspen in the foreground.
Being a Friday we headed to our cabin NE of Gore Pass where the aspen were at their peak. We intended to stay two nights but the forecast for Sunday morning was a fropa and lows in the low 20's. I was too lazy to winterize the camper already so we headed back to Fort Collins. Getting there was a challenge as Hwy 14 was closed due to a fire. I checked in the morning if Wyoming Hwy 131 was open as there was a fire west of there. It was OK then but when we got to Walden it was also closed. We then had to drop south to I-70 turning a normal 3.25h drive into over 5 hours. We arrived back to Fort Collins to find very smokey conditions.
