Magic Moments on Public Lands / COME TO LIFE 13 Roll the window down and feel the breeze along the Rivers Edge Wildlife Drive in BROWNS PARK NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE . About as northwest as you can get and still be in Colorado, Browns Park sits in a valley along the remote Green River 60 miles west of Maybell. Solitude-seeking hunters, fishers, photogra-phers, campers and wild-life watchers commune on lands once home to Fort Davy Crockett. W 14 Raft the tumbling rapids of the CACHE LA POUDRE RIVER . Colorado’s only nationally designated Wild and Scenic River, it carves down Poudre Canyon through narrow sections flanked by alpine mountainsides and natural rock cliffs west of Fort Collins. The triumph of paddling over a rapid named Devil’s Staircase is second only to the views and the chance to spot bighorn sheep and deer scampering along its rocky hills. T @carfull...home from Mongolia 15 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: FLICKR/CARFULL...HOME FROM MONGOLIA; MOUNTAIN WHITEWATER; ETHAN WELTY; EFRAÍN M. PADRÓ; MILES/ANDREA BUROLLA. Feel the first pole pull of a foot-long walleye at NORTH STERLING STATE PARK . Fishers relish lazy summer days perched on the shore of North Sterling Reservoir, surrounded by wide-open short-grass prairie near Sterling. One of the state’s best warm-water fisheries, North Sterling sends anglers back to their campsites with more than fish tales — walleye, catfish, largemouth bass, rainbow trout, bluegill, northern pike and yellow perch are on the menu for lucky anglers. X 16 Marvel at the masonry of Colorado’s ancient people at HOVENWEEP NATIONAL MONUMENT . So adept were the construction skills of the ancient Ancestral Puebloans who lived near today’s Cortez, that parts of their structures still stand more than 700 years later. Those who tour the area’s mesas and canyons today are left to specu-late about the purpose of the multistory brick towers. Archaeologists think they could have been homes, storage silos for crops, defensive forts or ceremo-nial structures. X 17 Follow the LOST CREEK WILDERNESS Lost Creek’s red-rock formations near Bailey aren’t as dramatic as those at better-known spots like Garden of the Gods and Red Rocks parks, but there are a whole lot more of them. Many of the area’s domes, knobs, spires and buttresses have eroded in such a way that creeks seem to disappear between their hidden crevices — hence the name. Visit COLORADO. com/Wilderness to find others. S VISITING ANY COLORADO STATE PARKS WITH THE KIDS? Twenty-nine of the 41 parks have Family Activity Backpacks available for check out at the park k visitor centers. With bug boxes, magnifiers, guide books, binoculars and more, the packs help explorers of any age discover how fun the journey through the great outdoors can be. COLORADO.com/CSPBackpacks COLORADO.COM / 43
Colorado Official State Vacation Guide 2018: Page 43
