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Dowdy Lake, Red Feather Lakes, Co.

Dowdy Lake Sunset

Rock spires jutting from the glassy lake beckon us to paddle out to explore.   The surrounding sandstone cliffs dotting the horizon act as way points along a hiking or biking adventure trail, lined with colorful wildflowers and unexpected howling cows munching on the verdant pastures.   This is Red Feather Lakes. This area is one of our favorite day destinations for mountain biking, hiking, and kayaking.  Chock full of rock features, beautiful lakes, and great vistas of the surrounding mountains, we have always wanted to camp on Dowdy Lake to enjoy the gorgeous sunsets as well….and so we did! With a network of nearby trails, Mount Margaret, Lady Moon, that interconnect the lakes, we had a great base camp from which to mountain bike and kayak…double the fun!

The view from our camp site
One of the many rock spires and islands on Dowdy Lake

Dowdy Lake itself is picturesque, dotting its smooth surface is multiple rock spires, rock islands, and coves to explore while kayaking.   Oddly, I haven’t heard of anyone naming these rock spires which clearly have animal features….so let me right that wrong and hereby proclaim the following islands of Dowdy Lake, you can thank me later:

Cormorant Lookout Rock
Duck Rock
Turtle Island
Teddy Bear Rock Spire. Look closely and you can see the teddy bear is hugging his own little teddy bear baby. Aww!

The next day we went on a mountain bike adventure, exploring new interconnecting trails in the area and revisiting the Columbine Trail, one of the more dramatic vistas off of the Mount Margaret trail.  We were amused to find a herd of cows in one of the high meadows and had to navigate between them, at one point on a very tight trail:

Suzie doing her best to get the cows to “Mooove over”, they weren’t amused by the bad pun.
When you suspect you’re somehow different, but nobody will tell you how. Poor brown cow!

We have never actually found the proper end of the Columbine trail, until this trip where we took the right series of turns on false forks to end up at the ubiquitous end of the trail…man I hope that isn’t an omen:

It’s the end of the trail for Suzie and Ethan! Those of you who know Suzie’s stature realize she must be standing on a stump that I rolled up for her to stand on. Selfies are so hard to take with her!

Along the way we were treated with many wildflower clumps:

Sego Lily
Alpine Asters
Hare Bells
Sticky Geranium

And then we took the side spur to look at Columbine Ridge, gorgeous:

The front of Columbine Ridge is guarded by a sea lion. See him proudly standing guard atop the rock?
Columbine Ridge stretches for quite a distance, this is just a small section of the ridge

To the end of the spur to look at the views.  Along the way I found this:

Those of you who know Larimer County are familiar with Stove Prairie, here I found the namesake, a stove in a prairie. “Honey, can you check the oven? I think the buckshot pie is done!”

We hope you enjoyed this visit to Dowdy Lake. Leave your comments below. I have to share one last sunset:

Cotton candy sunsets, my favorite!