So, you are probably wondering where is Catarack Lake? Never heard of it before? Neither did we, but after perusing through the "Best of Colorado" book, I landed on a picture of this lake. It had two things going for it right away: a nice hike around a mountain lake, and it was one of the scenic picks mentioned by the author. Catarack Lake and Falls is located about 45 minutes north of Silverthorne, off of I-70. Interstate 70 just happens to be one of Jerry's (my brother-in-law) favorite roads to travel, especially when pulling a 33 ft. 5th wheel travel trailer. But I digress, back to our hike.
This is not an easy place to find, thank goodness for good directions in the book. The last couple of miles to the trailhead is a narrow and bumpy dirt road. We thought no one else would be there since it is rather remote. Wrong! By the time we left, there were 25 vehicles in the two parking lots.
We arrived at the trailhead at 10 AM after driving for 2 1/2 hours. The clouds were already building up and we hoped we wouldn't get poured on as we began our trek.
This is a view at the start of the hike, just a few wildflowers and the lake in the background.
The first part took us through meadows and a grove of Aspen trees.
As we headed toward the falls at the other end of the lake, the flowers became more profuse. Don is ahead of me, as usual and he patiently waits as I stop every 5 minutes of so to take some more flower pictures. If you ask him, he'd probably tell you it was more often than that, but I am the one writing the blog!
Below is one of my favorite pictures from this hike, with the flowers, lake and the clouds being reflected in the water.
The Columbines were out in all their glory, competing for space among all the other yellow, white, pink, red, purple and blue flowers. I love taking photos of these beautiful, delicate flowers that also are Colorado's state flower.
The hiking path was almost overgrown with all of the flowers on the hillside.
Most of the Columbines were light blue, but we also came across these deep purple ones. Naturally, off came the camera lens cap again, and more photos were snapped. My personal theory is that you can NEVER have too many flower pictures! My friend from high school, Marsha, said that I must have been a flower child, and I have to agree with her!
As we rounded one of the turns we could see the top of Catarack Falls. You can barely see it through the trees and vegetation, but we could sure hear it long before we got there!
More flowers, and as an added bonus, a butterfly!
This is one view of the falls as it cascaded down toward the lake.
Just so you know I actually took the hike, here is proof! I sat myself down on large rock in the middle of the path and had Don take my picture. Look for the pink in photo!
As we headed back, the ominous, black clouds turned into fluffy, white ones. That meant we could take more time and not have to worry about getting rained on. You have to keep your eye on the weather here. Colorado storms build up very quickly and a blue sky can turn to a black one within 15 minutes.
After the hike, we had a picnic lunch at a parking lot by a historic cemetery! No, this was not by chance. We had read about this in the Colorado book also and decided to learn about this piece of Colorado history. The "inhabitants" here immigrated from Kansas in the late 1800's because they thought the railroad was going to go through this area. The railroad never came, but they stayed and homesteaded the land by the Blue River.
You can see our truck in the parking lot, behind the white picket fence. There were advantages to eating here: 1) it was quiet 2) no fast food place with tempting french fries in sight 3) not a single living soul here to disturb us and 4) the scenery was beautiful. Maybe it sounds a bit strange or weird to you but it made sense to us!
P.S. We didn't have "soul food" for lunch.
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