Family Adventure on Rule Ridge
A short dirt road family adventure on Rule Ridge. It’s late April and we decided to explore a little bit of Woodland Park. It’s one of our favorite small towns in Colorado. I also wanted to scope out potential campgrounds and dry camping spots in the area too.
If you’re new here, let me give you an idea on how we plan out our adventures.
We like to spend a few hours on the weekend exploring the dirt roads of Colorado. We do this about every weekend. We’ll pick an area or trail that we’d like to explore, then decide if this adventure will take a couple hours or all day. If the adventure will only take a couple hours, then we’ll decide if we need to pack a lunch or not. Sometimes we pack a lunch and sometimes we don’t, just depending on when we leave. This particular trip we left after breakfast and made it home by lunch.
Trail Description
We headed up 67 and turned left onto Painted Rocks Rd. We’d never been down here before and came across a Summer Camp place on the right. I didn’t have any service already so I couldn’t look it up. And by the time we got off the trail I had already forgotten the name of it.
We came up to an intersection and turned left. We came upon the Hayman burn area. It’s been 20 years since the fire broke out.
Off in the distance, it looked like snow was coming toward us.
We came up to another intersection and turned right. If you are looking in the FunTreks book, between waypoint 4 & 6, this section is a Blue. It was not difficult at all. We’ve driven this trail previously and the conditions have not changed.
About 30 minutes after I took these photos, it started to snow.
As we were driving I was marking waypoints on Gaia for potential camping spots.
Forest Service Road 364 ends at County Road 5. We took County Road 5 into Divide then 24 home.
As we were leaving Woodland park the snow stopped. But when we got home again, the snow picked up. The kids said the snow storm followed us home.
Trail Conditions
The trail was great. There wasn’t any snow on the trail at all. We expected there to be at least some… nothing! It did start snowing while we were on the trail. By the time we got to Divide the snow had dusted most of the forest. But the trail was still clear.
Conclusion
Rule Ridge was a great trail. We’ve driven the whole thing before. We were merely looking for camping spots and just exploring the forest. So this time we didn’t do the whole loop. And we were getting hungry.
Any time you and the family are itching to get out and explore, we highly recommend Woodland Park. Just turn down some dirt roads and you’ll find adventure.
