Our first goal was to find a place or two to fish along the way to American Basin on the Alpine Loop which was the goal.
The interesting thing is there is a lot of private land up here along the mountains with clear No Trespassing signs. You aren’t allowed to fish in those waters. You have to find the few and far between public areas to fish which along that side of the Alpine Loop were not very frequently seen. We did find one area that required a walk down to get to the stream - steeper than it looked. The climb up wasn’t all that easy and my seal level lungs didn’t like it much! We were not very successful in catching fish but some interesting tidbits for you from here:
- Beautiful little stream
- Takes awhile to put all the stuff on the fishing rods so we can go fish
- John slipped in the stream while walking over to the other side... landed on his butt.
- Stephen tried our patience (and scared the fish away too) by yelling, crying or screaming at some point during the fishing time
- Rachel is the official “hook rescue” person.
- Rachel almost stepped on a snake that was coiled up in the water..... wonder what kind of snake that was?? anyone??
- John had to go in after a caught hook that was too deep for Rachel
- John almost caught a fish - alas, almost. The fish took the fly.
- The rest of us were just trying not to catch a rock.
Once finished with fishing at this place, we continued on our Jeep ride up the mountains on the Alpine Loop. Lots of ATV’s along here zipping up and down. We were going very slow even though the Jeep can do much more. The scenery is just beautiful along here. We saw perhaps some marmots although they are kind of small. Guess they could have been beavers sunning themselves as we were near some beaver dams, but we’re not sure. We didn’t do the entire Loop but did get to American Basin which was full of beautiful wildflowers. Unfortunately for us, it was raining a bit up there and quite cold. It’s also where we chose to eat lunch so Rachel was making sandwiches in the cold rain in American Basin!! :-)
After we ate, we were going to go a little bit higher along the American Basin road and then changed our mind. In the process of backing up and turning around, the Jeep ended up high centered on a large rock spinning the wheels. UH OH!! Hmmm... what do we do? Well, John the Great, gets out and I get in the drivers seat. From the front of the Jeep, he pushes the Jeep backwards over the rock and uphill no less until we were back onto the regular path (not road as we lost the paved road miles and miles before). More pictures below.
And now.... for the debut of Stephen’s comments to the blog!
Stephen’s Super Sweet Square: My Eye,Fishing and Alpine Loop which includes John
Guess what we did 3 days ago ,we went on the Durango to Silverton train. While we were on the train I got a lot of soot in my eye and I guess I rubbed it around and scratched my cornea three times. Two times on the side and once on the top of my eye. Other than that, my week has been good. today we went fishing. We (mom, me and R) .John was using Poppy’s fly rod and a fish took the fly. We also did a part of the Alpine Loop called American Basin which has the cool flowers and chipmunks and also where John pushed Jeep, by himself, off a rock (How strong is JOHN?)
No comments:
Post a Comment