When you hear ‘Aspen’ you immediately think of a few things; skiing, movie stars, and lots of money. You can now add off-roading and free (real) camping  to that list, who would have thought?

We arrived in Aspen around 1pm, driving through light rain the entire way. As luck would have it (yet again) we were in for a treat as that rain turned to SNOW once we arrived in downtown Aspen! We both agreed that we would take a full on blizzard over a clear sunny day anytime for this drive so we could get the full effect of being in the Rockies!

We found a short hiking trail near downtown and took Odie out to get some exercise and pictures of Aspen. Would love to come back here again during the ski season (after we win the lottery, hehe).

After our hike we decided to start making our way towards Colorado Springs since it was a 3+HR drive. This is where the fun and amazement came in… saw a dirt road way up in the mountains and decided to go off-roading, another spur of the moment decision that would pay us handsomely in memories and experiences. It turns out that Aspen is surrounded by National Forests which are plentiful in well maintained dirt roads and dispersed campsites.

The hardcore outdoorsman tent camping in the snow!

We didn’t end up getting back on the road until 430-5ish after multiple comments of ‘ok, we will just drive for 5 more minutes then we HAVE to get back on the road…’.

Driving Video (will upload a couple more good ones later when i have better wifi):

A few shots from the top of the Rockies:

Some more ‘360 photosphere’ pics as I can’t get enough of these (save image to phone then open or it won’t work, if you have iPhone then your SOL because I don’t know how to view these on there):

This next one is from hiking trial in downtown Aspen.

And just the other day we were in the desert covered in red sand…. what an amazing and beautiful country we have. 🙂

Weather is looking better today so hopefully we get some good pics of Pikes Peak and Royal Gorge Bridge!