STATE FOREST STATE PARK — We were out of place without neon orange clothing when we stopped in the surprisingly large visitor center at State Forest State Park.
An enormous barbed-wire moose statue greets visitors outside the Moose Visitor Center, and a gargantuan taxidermied moose greets visitors inside. As we’d headed home from Steamboat, across North Park, my husband and I finally saw the hunters that all those “Hunters welcome!” signs in Walden must’ve been for, inside of the visitor center.
Is it moose season? As we had debated whether to head to Steamboat for the weekend, I just kept thinking: it’s the offseason, the absolute end of the fall leaf-peeping season, a time when plenty of hotels around the state are offering discounts ahead of the ski-season crush. When I’d popped into the our first morning in Steamboat, a sign had warned me that they’d be “closed for mud season” after Halloween.
No-doughnuts season. The season of my discontent.
Even with lodging discounts, we had reason to debate whether the expense of a weekend away at this time of the year was worth it. Will the aspens be bare? Will all of the restaurants be open? Rain was in the forecast for the weekend, and if the outdoor recreation was cut off by weather, would there be enough adventuring to do?
I packed a good book and an umbrella, and we set off on northern roads we’d never traveled toward the upper reaches of the Poudre Canyon and State Forest State Park on Colorado 14. To get there, we let Google Maps send us along tiny back roads that edged the foothills west of Loveland.
Down here, it wasn’t shoulder season. Fall burst forth as we skirted farms, cottonwoods and cliffsides, eventually popping out in Masonville, only to duck back into some of the most curvaceous driving I’ve experienced in Colorado, and that was before we got to the Poudre.
Wondering whether we’d have an interesting weekend fell by the wayside as we crossed Cameron Pass, wowed at the craggy wonders and descended into North Park, where we could see smoke billowing directly ahead of us. A water truck passed us. Then a park ranger coming the other way stopped traffic and turned us all around. A controlled burn outside of Walden was out of control, and the fire was cutting off our route to Steamboat in a part of the state that doesn’t have a whole lot of highways.
“We’re closing the road ahead,” the ranger said. “You know where the Rand cutoff is?”
“The what?” I replied.
We ended up racing across North Park on a dirt county road and made a delightful stop at the Rand Store (go if you’re in the neighborhood), where the proprietress told us how to get on another dirt county road that would save us 20 miles or more and get us to Steamboat faster.
Dusty but back on track, we rolled into Steamboat at rush hour, which was also happy hour. We checked in at the , right downtown, and walked to it was almost impossible to choose (and made us glad we were within walking distance).
The Barley, like the rest of Steamboat, was hopping, and it felt silly to have given our supposedly offseason getaway a second thought. For and , we seemed to arrive just in time to get the last table and not quite have to wait.
Saturday, we went out for a hike on what , which starts right in town, was busy, but like most trails, it was only busy for the first mile and a half. Some golden leaves were still clinging to the trees along the lower reaches, but as we climbed through the valley, continually crossing and re-crossing the creek, the aspens went bare. I was glad it was fall — there wasn’t much shade at the top of the trail. We would have baked doing that in the summer.
A front came through on Sunday, so we decided to head home after breakfast. We tracked back across North Park, through Walden this time, and stopped at the Moose Visitor Center in part because we were so wowed by the mountains up here.
Crossing Cameron Pass again, we noted the signs that warned drivers that there’s no snowplowing most of the night on Colorado 14.
Good thing we came through when we did. Sounds like a tough drive during the ski season.
Jenn Fields: jfields@denverpost.com
