T'Dubing to a couple of Recreation Areas along Rampart Range Road

The southern part of this rather large forest is one of the easier to reach areas for dispersed camping.

Rampart Range Road bisects the portion adjacent to the crowded I-25 corridor of the Colorado Front Range.

There's fee camping along the northern half of Rampart Range Road, and dirt bike trails throughout.  Narrow, twisty trails which get dangerously crowded with speeding dirt bikers.

This is why I prefer this side of Rampart Range, quieter, less dirt bikes and OHVs are banned from the main road. 

Spent Wednesday day resting and reading between bouts of litter pickup.  So far, 4 full kitchen trash bags   The campsite itself wasn't bad at all, the surrounding area, not so much.

It was a rather hazy day, you could barely see Pikes Peak:

A nice weather day otherwise, ending in a decent sunset:

Thursday, August 14

About 60 mi of Forest Road riding today, my butt was hurting at the end of all that.   Not only am I getting old but the seat on the TW200 is not exactly the comfortable thing in the world. 

First I checked out the Farish Recreation Area, run by the USAFA.  United States Air Force academy. 

As with any Air Force facility, it's way better than a comparable Army facility would be.  Very nice, access to three small lakes for fishing, camping cabins, campsites tents and RVs.  You do have to have DOD access or be a veteran under the VA's care though.

It's another hazy day today, so the views of Pike Peak aren't good 

Why this pic?

Here's why, nice wedding location 

Observatory?

The full utilities RV spots are $40/day!

Next, I rode further South on Rampart Range Road and checked out the Rampart Range Reservoir Recreation Area.

Not a scenic, it's basically just a reservoir where you can launch watercraft but not swim. 

There's a couple of campgrounds run by the USFS, typical of such most of the sites are pretty small but they do have water spigots and pit toilets I believe. 

Once I was back on Rampart Range Road, I continued south until I went past mile marker 12 and came up on this overlook site. 

That's the town of Cascade down there, entry point to the Pikes Peak highway.

Pikes Peak Highway

There's also a marker stone at this overlook commemorating the efforts of the CCC in building Rampart Range Road, back in 1935. 

It was passing at this point and I was getting tired and hungry. So I turned around and rode the 16 mi or so of dirt road back to camp. 

Another view of Pikes Peak from a candidate campsite:

I thought this set of poles was the beginning of a Zipline setup.  Now, not sure....thoughts?

I did locate and map a few new campsite candidates along the road that I might end up using someday.

By 1:00 p.m. I was cooking lunch and I would end up resting the rest of the afternoon away, while writing up this post. 

The afternoon was overcast guys but temperatures in the '70s so nice and cool.