Fort Collins
is a city in Northern Colorado along the foothills of
the Rocky Mountains about 50 miles south of Cheyenne,
Wyoming. Fort Collins is the home of the Colorado
State University. The population is about 100,000+.
It is a beautiful city with lots of city parks, where
you find people taking advantage of all of
them.
It has a trail system of over 13 miles. This is used
by bicyclers, walkers, joggers, and a few skate
boarders. Everyone seems to respect the different
users of the trails. Here are pictures of the
trails. Picture 1.
Picture 2. There
are two trail systems. One is called Springcreek
trail, and the other the Poudre trail. They are
adding new sections to the trails each year.
Eventually they are going to Greeley, to Loveland,
and back to Fort Collins.
I usually walk about 3 miles almost
every morning, depending on what else I have to do,
like playing golf, or going on side trips. I drive
my car to a parking lot, walk about 1-1/2 miles and
then back. The next day, I will drive down the trail
system to another parking lot and walk back to the
place that I had stopped the day before. I usually
walk the whole system during the summer in 5 complete
round trips.
The trails are marked off in 1/4 mile sections.
These quarter mile sections are marked so if there is
an accident, or someone gets sick, help will know
exactly where to go to render aid. Where there are
no businesses close by for a telephone, they have
call boxes.
The Cache La Poudre river source comes from
the mountains north of Fort Collins, and runs through
the city. You can do river
rafting on this river. Here is a picture of rafting on the Cache
La Poudre. This picture gives the
story of how the river came to be named.
Just north of the city there is a Budweiser plant.
They give tours daily. This is a training center for
the beautiful Clydesdale horses.
They have had a new colt, which is
only a few week old, each year that we have visited
the Travelers Center at the plant.