38 miles, 4:35/6:00

We skirt the Cruces Basin Wilderness today, with spectacular views of naked, rocky Brazos Ridge from all directions. There are parklike areas of tall golden grass swirling with the breeze contrasted with short, dark pines in clumps of twos and threes that looks too tidy and perfect to be natural.

We finish the day on pavement and end at Hopewell Lake. The campground is near the lake but not on it. We cruise around the entire place and there is no one there. The trash cans are all overflowing, the outhouses lack TP. The sign at the front has an old price of $5 replaced with shiny new numbers indicating $10 now, with another notice saying this campground is now maintained by some corporation out of Utah. Maintained, huh? We’ve found that many of the Forest Service campgrounds all the way down the Divide are “maintained” by different companies. Sometimes that means very clean and tidy camps, with friendly hosts that like to chat and pass on good information, like the friendly guy at Big Springs campground in Idaho. Others, like this, seem to be an excuse to charge more for lower quality services. On principal (and being a bit grossed out on my part) we decide to ride into the forest and free camp on our own. What we find is that everyone else had the same idea. As Dave says, “Hopewell Lake: where more people camp outside the campground than in it!”

We find a nice spot next to a stand of aspens, on a slope facing East so we’ll have good morning sun. We’ve been in the high elevations with aspen for days now, and it’s beautiful to be watching autumn in action. However, the mornings can be very chilly at this elevation in mid-September, so now instead of looking for evening sun to dry our clothes, we look for camp spots with morning sun to warm our toes. (That was nifty rhyming there, eh?)