Every year I pack up my children and ship them off for a week of sleepaway camp. This summer, Sara will spend a week with the Girl Scouts at Flying G Ranch near Cheesman Lake, and Mark will head off to Camp Chief Ouray at the YMCA’s Snow Mountain Ranch, near Granby.
And I will stay home, seething with jealousy.
They get to ride horses, paddle canoes, learn the names of flowers and birds, sing silly songs under the stars. The closest I come to an authentic sleepaway camp experience is doing their laundry after they get home.
Family camps do exist, and Colorado has some fine ones. But they are pricey, prime weeks for the summer-long programs disappear fast and many family sessions at traditional camps (like Chief Ouray’s) happen in late August, when my Colorado kids have already been banished back to school.
That is why I’m glad to have discovered Grand Lake, which is summer camp disguised as a town.
Going to Camp Grand Lake happens on your schedule, for a week or a weekend. You can lease a luxurious vacation home right on the edge of the state’s largest glacial lake, find a funky cottage, get a motel room or pitch a tent in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Where the ’60s live
There is no chain anything in Grand Lake.
Grand Lake is stuck in the 1960s in all the good ways. There are two sweet shops that sell fudge and salt-water taffy, a handmade miniature golf course and a down-at-the-heels shooting gallery. Sombrero Ranch in town and Winding River Resort, just inside the park, lead trail rides. There’s bingo in Town Square on Friday nights.
Our favorite funky cottage is one step up from car camping. It has a tiny kitchen, a wraparound deck with a view of Shadow Mountain Lake, a skychair in the pines and a firepit made for marshmallow toasting. We fill the hummingbird feeder with sugar water and watch green-and-red birds zoom in and out, fighting for dominance. We imagine them trash-talking in tiny voices: I am the mightiest. No, ME.
One night Doug got up to use the bathroom in the small hours and saw a moose wandering through the side yard.
The snack shop down by the lakefront does a roaring business in burgers and soft-serve. Little kids dig in the sand and tiptoe into the water, which is about five minutes from snowmelt even on the warmest days. Bigger kids hurl themselves from the dock. Guys throw sticks for their Labrador retrievers. On the weekend, the lake is full of every kind of watercraft, from tricked-out speedboats to single kayaks.
You can fit a whole week’s worth of relaxation into about three days. There’s a chili cook-off and auction to benefit the Grand Lake Fire Department June 24, a wonderful old-
fashioned Fourth of July with fireworks, the annual Western Weekend July 15-16 and the Grand Lake Regatta July 29. The Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre brings musicals to town every season, staged by a talented crew of professionals, locals and college students.
Last year we stayed right downtown at the Western Riviera Motel for Western Weekend, parked the car and only moved it a couple of times to drive to hikes in the park. The rest of the time we just ambled around town, up bright and early for Rotary Club pancakes, down to the lake for a swim, back up for lunch and a quick round of golf, inside for a nap and some reading during the obligatory afternoon thundershower.
Get out of town
If people are not your thing, miles of magnificent backcountry begin right at the edge of town, for a rigorous hike or a walk through the woods in search of birds and a picnic lunch in the shade.
Sara and I shared a kayak and paddled quietly around the edge of the lake, looking up at the evergreens and the looming bulk of Mount Baldy. That was after we learned not to put two adults and two kids on a two-
person paddleboat, no matter what the guy at the dock tells you. Lesson 2: A Nalgene bottle doesn’t work great for bailing, but it will do in a pinch.
Reserve some time to browse the stores along the downtown boardwalks. The Kachina Trading Post sells every politically incorrect toy a middle-aged person might expect never to see again.
“What I love is that I’m buying cheesy Western souvenirs for my kids at the same place my father bought cheesy Western souvenirs for me,” Doug said.
You sense a lot of family traditions taking place in Grand Lake, generations gathering at summer houses, kids learning stuff their grandparents know. I watched a fellow on the dock teach two of his school-aged nieces how to skip stones one night just before sunset, working out of a 3-pound coffee can, and remembered my dad doing that with my sister and me.
Lisa Everitt is a freelance writer who lives in Arvada.
The details
Grand Lake’s Western Weekend is July 15-16. Among the events: bingo, Rotary Club pancake breakfast in the park, 5K run, square dance, ice cream social, library used-book sale, parade and the 59th annual Buffalo BBQ. Visit grandlakechamber.com or call 800-531-1019.
The Western Riviera Motel offers traditional motel rooms at the lakeside, plus newly renovated housekeeping units with kitchens a block away. You’re within walking distance of everything in Grand Lake, including the essential soft-serve ice cream and miniature golf. Rooms start at $100-
110 per night in the summer; cabins range from $110 to $150. 419 Garfield St., 970-627-3580, westernriv.com.
