Homestead Meadows Hiking

Brinkley and I drove up to Estes Park yesterday morning to meet up with Brent at Hermit Park Open Space for our super short camping trip.  Our campground was in the Hermits Hollow loop right off the main road.  Most people were leaving when I was arriving so we pretty much had the run of the place.

After eating lunch with Brent's parents, we headed off down the Homestead Meadows trail.  Or at least the trail to get to the Homestead Meadows trail.  There is about a mile and half connector trail from Hermit Park Open Space to the National Forest property that has the Homestead Meadow trails.  The trail is mostly made of old service roads which made it easy hiking.  There were a few deeply rutted spots but other than that, everything was in great shape.

Brent had his GPS tracking us.  It took about two and half miles of hiking before we reached our first fork in the road.  We chose the trail to the left and headed off towards the Irvin homestead and sawmill.  The fork to the right was the Brown homestead.  We could see it from the trail...

Up and to the right of the green bush at center.  

See!

 After another 3/4 mile or so of hiking we reached the Irvin Homestead.  It was pretty cool to see that there were still quite a few buildings standing.  It was obvious that the buildings had been bought and sold over the years as there was a whole variety of things left behind.  The house Brinkley is in front of had a red and white checkered tile flooring from the 1960s that had seen better days.

"Look what I found, Mom!"

Brinkley loves to explore everything too!  This dog has been a few places!  HA!

The Happy Hikers!

We were about 3 miles into the hike at this point.  Outside of a little overheating and needing to take a breather, Brink was doing really well.  We started to see him favor his hind leg just a little bit when we were hiking uphill in the sun and his tongue was getting long.  After we took a break in the shade and refueled, he seemed to be back in good shape.

Sniff, sniff, sniff.

Down the hill from the main house there was this bath house.  To our back is the natural spring that is running downhill.  And that tank on the back of the building is an old school hot water heater type thing.  No lugging water to the bath tub and no freezing spring water!!!  My kind of place!

And the tub was sunken.  This homesteader had it made!  With a setup like that, I wonder how often they took baths?  Rubber duckie, you're the one!  Rubber duckie, you make bath time lots of fun!

"Fascinating.  Just fascinating!"

I'm not quite sure what the ladder has to do with anything.  Clearly it's much too late to fix the roof.

Brent is pointing at the spring bed frame inside that was labelled U.S.  He thinks it was for U.S. military.  Who knows.  My guess would be the U.S. Forest Service.  We saw forest service cabins on our Encampment, Wyoming trip way back when and everything was labelled U.S. in those.  

The government could give me 400 acres like this and I'd be more than happy to "improve" it by building a house.  Ah, those were the days. 

I'd really like to know who hauled these metal signs miles into the forest.  A lot of work for decor, no? 

I really would have liked to kept going from homestead to homestead.  There are eight homestead sites scattered around the meadows but probably another 5 or 6 miles worth of hiking to see them all.  We'll have to see others another day.  Mountain biking is allowed on the trails so we're debating that as an option.

"Gosh.  Humans are so slow.  Stop and Go.  Stop and Go.  We're never going to get back to the camper."

This picture doesn't show it really well but the cloud like things over the tree tops are actually smoke plumes from the High Park fire.  They looked way more ominous than the picture lets on.  

Self Portrait back at the car!

To the right is the road/trail that connects to the National Forest property.  There are two cabins on the road that are part of Hermit Park Open Space and can be rented out.  That's definitely on my To Do list.  What a view, eh?

I originally wanted to hike Kruger Rock again this morning.  Brent had already hiked about 15 miles prior to my arrival so his feet were blister filled and he was hobbling around like an old man and bailed on Kruger Rock.  I slept like absolute garbage last night so I was tired once the sun came beating in the windows.  I was a little sore and really didn't feel like hiking by myself.

I wish I could have stayed camping a few more days.  Our hike was about 6.4 miles in 3-4 hours.  I felt pretty good while hiking.  My boots treated my feet well.  Brinkley faired well.  He got a little stiff once he stopped moving back at camp and limped around a few times after his first nap.  He hasn't limped much today and looks to be moving fluidly.  

I took a nap this afternoon to make up for the lack of sleep last night.  I woke even more sore than I was this morning.  My left knee hurts quite a bit.  I took a hot bath to soak by legs, which helped!

And now I'm done rambling.  Night, all!