Finding our Spot in Fort Collins, Colorado

Downtown Fort Collins CO Dismount ZoneLast Fall as we left Colorado and headed to the Tetons and Yellowstone for Jerry’s final road trip adventure, we stopped in Fort Collins for lunch. A friend from Portland told us it was a cool place to live, and I thought that if a Portlander paid a compliment to the city, it must be something special.

And it is. Located north of Denver in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, this city’s vibrant downtown, thriving business community, bikeability, excellent university and great breweries immediately pulled us in, and has been calling us back ever since.

Nine months later, we have returned to scout the nearby mountains for Jerry’s land.

When we fell under the spell of this “Best Places” city, I didn’t know it at the time, but my long lost cousin, Robert (aka “Son”) Chavez lives here. He found me on FaceBook and we started communicating again for the first time since we were kids.

Our families have such a long history that even though we aren’t blood relatives, we still call each other “cousins.” Our Dads have known each other since the 1950s, and our families shared a lot of good times and camping trips while growing up. As life went on and we got older, our Dads still remained close, but the rest of us eight kids scattered about to live our lives.

drunken monkies robert and stephenWhen I found out that Son and his partner Steven, are Fort Collins locals, I was thrilled. When I learned that Steven’s sister and brother in law, Mike and Marie, are well-established real estate agents here, I was ecstatic. Then, I learned that one of my dearest friends, Renee, is moving here from California, and I’ve been giddy ever since! We are determined to find our mountain property somewhere within 1 hour of the city.

What a find. We have family and friends here, and we love the fact that we can get lost in the Rockies yet still so close to such an aweseome town. It’s everything we’ve been looking for.

After two years of searching, it really feels like our destiny is written here. Now, if we could only find that property . . .

10 thoughts on “Finding our Spot in Fort Collins, Colorado”

    • Funny you ask, I just wrote about the cheap place we stayed for a while, the Greeley Missile Silo Campground.

      The only thing wrong with this area is there are no affordable places to stay, and little boondocking other than Hellmart or the Missile Silo. If you go 1 hour away up into the mountains outside of Fort Collins, there’s plenty of free boondocking but no dump stations. And, it’s reallllly muddy up there now because of the rain, so good spots are hard to come by, especially on the weekends. We checked it out but deemed it too risky to take the rig there.

      The RV parks here are way overpriced because Rocky Mtn. National Park is so close. That’s why we resigned ourselves to staying at the KOA in cow country, Wellington, about 7 miles north of Ft. Collins. Sigh.

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