State Park Weekend {Part B: Rifle Falls}

After our highly successful state park adventure of Saturday, we decided even more exploring was in the cards for our Monday holiday.  (Callie, incidentally, learned another new "day": "holiday" which is just like "Saturday" in that Dad doesn't go to work and we "play!" and have "fun!")

Our destination for MLK day (January 19th): Rifle Falls State Park, which is about an hour and a half drive from our house.  And what a lovely drive it was.  While the sky wasn't as brilliant blue as Saturday's outing, we did get to traverse new territory through some lovely ranch land near New Castle and beyond.  It really was a pretty drive once we got off I-70 (though the freeway from our house to New Castle is definitely not a bad drive; I certainly am not complaining about it).  We saw lots of horses, sheep and cows, and even a few hawks soaring up above or perched high on a wire.

We pulled into the Rifle Falls parking lot and were the only ones there for a few minutes.  We decided to ditch the backpack and just free-walk this one (which turned out to be a smart move as you'll see later).  Callie loved walking ("walking!") up the wide dirt road trail to the falls in her little barbaloot suit and boots.  Around the falls we met a family who offered to take our picture (they got there after us, but quickly passed us on the trail since we were walking at Callie pace).

Then we headed around on the Coyote Trail, which took us past some fun caves, a few of which were big enough to walk inside a ways.  The trail then meanders past a little stream and up to the top of the falls, where there are a couple of kind of scary (totally secure and fenced, but still scary) overlook points that hang out over the falls.  Up here we learned that the falls used to be used as electricity production for Rifle and other nearby towns when we saw that one of the falls was shooting over the cliff out of a pipe.  Up there are some wooden remnants of the electricity plant buildings.  The trail happens to loop back down to the main trail, but to do so would require some stealthy maneuvers down a few flights of stairs covered in solid ice.  We tried it down one flight, passing Cal along like a sack of potatoes, but decided the next set wasn't worth the risk and turned around to retrace our steps.  A wise decision, I believe, especially seeing as Gregg was hiking in his moccasins.  (Silly boy.)

We made it back down (though it was slick coming the way we had come, too).  We finished off our adventure by eating a picnic lunch of tuna and/or cheese sandwiches, tortilla chips and apple slices.  Lunch of champions!  Callie was a super champ and promptly fell asleep once we were back in the car and slept pretty much the whole way home (you may not realize that this is epic, but it is!).  (Gregg actually was the only one who stayed awake the whole drive home, which was really important since he was the driver!)  Another fun day in the books.  We like holidays and Saturdays!

(Oh, and Cal, if you're ever reading this, your parents owe you $11 for this weekend's excursions.  Ha.  Yeah, we raided your cash savings to fund our outings.  We'll pay you back in diapers.  Wink, wink.)

Rifle Falls - the "only 80-foot triple waterfalls in Colorado"
(as per the website).

Pretty cute fam if I do say so myself.

Another angle.

Really bad focusing skills on some really cute kids.

The meandering trail near the stream.

Cave explorers.

The green growing things really stood out
amid all the white and brown everywhere.

Pretty view from the top.

Falling water (and a view of one of the
scary lookouts across the way).

They're not scared.

Pipe falls.

Over the edge.

Power plant leftovers.

Now looking down from the other side.

It's a long way down.

I can only imagine it would be lovely
in the summer when everything is green
and living.

We made it down those stairs (not really
sure how) and then back up them because
just around the corner they were even
sketchier.

That's the way to be carried on a hike!

Tight squeeze through the cave portion of the trail.

Lots of caves along that wall.

Getting up close and personal with the water.

I liked all the ice formations from the spray.

After we were all done I discovered the information sign.

More remnants of the power plant - now an amphitheater
(which I can't imagine has very good acoustics seeing as it sits
directly opposite the falls - kind of noisy spot!).

"Walking!"

Happy barbaloot.

Lunch was a yummy "nanatch!"

Silly gooses.