Hot weather Archives - Tena Stetler

Sep 10th Wow, in RMNP Mother Nature Continues to Thwart our Plans

You’ll remember back in June we traveled to Lake Tahoe to find three inches of snow at our camp ground and snow flurries during our stay. Heck we left Colorado the end of May amid 10 inches of snow. Well, Mother Nature continues to frown on us.

Mueller State Park as the fog lifts

Don’t get me wrong, our camping trips this year were still wonderful. A time to unplug and relax, but sometimes it was harder than others. Trips to Mueller State Park and Cheyenne Mountain State Parks were fantastic. However…

RMNP camping site view from behind our fifth wheel

For Labor Day Weekend, we packed up the new fifth wheel and hit the road for Rocky Mountain National Park. Usually one of our favorite camping trips. It’s a dry camping destination, in other words no power, sewer, and water is only available at several locations within the park but not at each campsite. Which is normally just fine with us. We have solar panels on the fifth wheel which meets our needs. The only thing not available by solar is air conditioning. Now who would have thought you’d need air conditioning in RMNP in September at over 9,000 feet? We sure didn’t. However, we would be wrong. The weather forecasters predicted 70 for the highs. Wrong. It was 88 to 90 degrees at our camp site during the day. We arrived Friday evening at dusk. The day time temp was cooling down, so we opened the windows in the fifth wheel, started a campfire, and relaxed toasting marshmallows and making s’mores.

Mystic, Wow would you look at this view!

We spent the following days of the holiday weekend driving the roads in RMNP in the comfort of our air conditioned truck. Why you ask? Because the sweltering heat inside the fifth wheel (no AC) was just to dang hot until evening. Hiking early, early morning was okay, but once the sun was up for a few hours, too hot for humans, dog, parrot and turtle. Yep, we became nocturnal campers. LOL

The drive up Trail Ridge Road was interesting, not nearly as many sightings of elk and other wild life as previous years. Too dang hot. They were bedded down somewhere in the shade below timberline. Even at the top of Trail Ridge Road, around 12,200 feet in altitude it was still warm enough to be comfortable in shorts, flip flops and tank tops. Weird. Usually coats, jeans, and shoes are required up there in September. Not this year.

The evenings were cool and the elk, deer, and other wild life wandered the meadows and crossed the creek in the moonlight.

Mystic checking out our picnic site

Even though we were inconvenienced by the heat, RMNP is still spectacular. But next year, we’ll try scheduling our RMNP camping trip for later in September. A bit of snow and cold, we can handle—heat, not so much.

Just one more camping trip left this season, then heartbreak of winterizing the fifth wheel and putting it in storage until next year’s camping adventures.