Colorado One Night Stands: Steamboat Springs

After Leadville, we headed out to the north, over three passes, to Steamboat Springs. Along the way, we passed some major mining operations. Leadville was, of course, a mining town, as was Coaldale (guess what they mined there?) Today, there is still mining - a huge Molybdenum mine is near the summit of one of the passes. They seem to be taking the mountain down - it appears quite destructive compared to other mining operations in the area. And there are large toxic looking lakes as well as tailings.

When we got down to I-70, there was a Starbuck's! So we got coffee and lunch. We headed east on I-70 through several large ski towns that were very developed, then turned north again and were in the country. We saw lots of rivers today - the Blue River, Colorado River, and Yampa River are three large ones.

When we got up to 40, we headed back west over Rabbit Ears Pass and crossed the Continental Divide again and descended into the Yampa Valley where Steamboat Springs town and ski area are. We got the last spot at Steamboat Campground (or maybe just the last spot they deemed big enough for us). It was a pretty nice place - the ONLY place in Steamboat - full hookups, cable, WiFi, laundry, store, and the Yampa River runs right through campground!

We ate dinner at an Italian place in town with a porch. The food was okay, but we enjoyed sitting on the porch overlooking the river and train tracks. We watched a coal train that went by forever and thought about mining and energy - where did the coal come from and where was it going? I once read that 70% of the electricity in this country comes from oil and coal burning power plants! Coming from California, where the perception is that much of our energy comes from hydroelectric dams, this was surprising to me. But we also get power from the Navajo Coal power plant that is dirtying the air at the Grand Canyon, among other fossil fuel burning power plants around the state.

We are really glad we have solar panels on our RV, and when we move into a "stick house" again, we would love to go solar! We are also glad we bought Terra Passes (we bought 3) to offset our carbon emissions and have done what we can, such as adding the Banks Power Pack Exhaust System, watching our speed/acceleration, and keeping our tires inflated with our SmarTire Tire Pressure Monitoring System and our Air Lift Heavy-Duty Air Compressor to increase our gas mileage (even though we have those primarily for safety). Even in a rolling house towing our Jeep, we get better gas mileage than a Hummer (H1, anyway). Of course that's not saying much! I guess we are using up all the "credit" we earned from walking or, in Devin's case, gliding (on his Segway) to work for years. We hope to have a low impact lifestyle after this adventure, but we are glad we are doing this while we still can.

See more photos of Leadville to Steamboat