Observatory at South Park

When we're traveling from one campground to another, we often plan to boondock single nights along the way. Harvest Hosts are a good way to do that. I like looking for unique places to stay. For example, there are a lot of alpaca farms in the program, but I don't really care to stay at those because we really don't need alpaca products. Similar concern with folks who are selling pottery or glassware... just don't need those products in the rig!

When I saw that there was an observatory on the Harvest Host map close to our route, and saw that it had great dark sky views, it seemed like a great choice for us! Carl would really love to get a picture of the Milky Way!

We had read the reviews of this Harvest Host location and there were reports that the road in could be very wash-boarded...

... and it was -- Elkhorn Road was pretty bad for about 4-4.5 miles, some places we had to slow to 5MPH or less! (It didn't *look* that bad, but the rig would start shaking so badly that we thought everything would disconnect from the walls and fall into the floor.)

Eventually we got to the Harvest Host location on Goldenburg Canyon Road. The owner has about a 5 acre plot -- open land, no trees. There are a lot of these small acreage plots in this area. He allows up to 6 RVers to come and boondock on his property. He said that, on the weekends in the summer, he is usually full with campers who book using Hipcamp (they pay for their sites) -- folks coming out probably from Denver and Colorado Springs.

He has quite a nice telescope...

but, unfortunately, it wasn't the best night for sky viewing. One mistake was mine in choosing the date, we were only a couple of nights after the full moon, and once the moon rises, it is hard to see darker areas of the sky. The other was -- you may remember in yesterday's post -- it looked stormy -- well, the clouds were pretty bad until middle of the night, when the moon was then up... we gave it up with using the telescope by about 10pm. 

Carl got up at about 2:30pm when WeatherBug indicated that the clouds may have cleared. They had cleared a bit, but he still couldn't see the Milky Way. We'll need to give that a try at another time!

In the morning...

... we saw something out the window (actually, if you look beyond the animal past the darker mountains closer to us, you may see a light shadow of another mountain beyond -- to the left of center -- that's Pike's Peak), anyway, back to the animal...

... zoomed in, it was a Pronghorn antelope! Our host had told us that we were on free range land and there may be cattle coming through (we didn't see any cattle). I don't exactly understand how ranchers can run cattle on other people's property -- I know that they use rangeland that is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) or National Forest Service, but I didn't know that cattle could freerange on private property too. I guess it depends on the contracted use of the land.

Carl got his drone out and took some pictures...

That's Goldenburg Canyon Road on the other side of Gracie (not much more than a single track driveway).

Looking out toward the northwest

... and toward the southeast...

...our host's trailer and small lean-to...

... looking at Gracie from above.

Some more pictures from ground level...

Out towards Pike's Peak (but impossible to see in this shot)

It was relatively flat and very hard packed.

He has the driving and parking spots outlined with small stones.

Goldenburg Canyon Road curved around the end of his property, so we were able to drive directly out...

View out from Goldenburg Canyon Road as we started to head down...

There were some nice houses in this area, but most places had a trailer or a tiny house on them, off the grid.

As we got back on Elkhorn Road, it seemed to be in better shape -- we came upon a road grader -- maybe it will be less washboardy for the next Harvest Host camper coming in!

We enjoyed this unique stop, even if we didn't get to enjoy the observatory as much as we had hoped.