Arapaho Bend Natural Area

With nice weather forecast, and the fact that we haven't been out of town in a little while, Noelle, Sierra, Rosie and I headed south down to Fort Collins for a little adventure. I wanted to go for a hike, but recent snow that is now melting, forced many of the trail to close down temporarily. Today, we opted to hike down along the Cache la Poudre River at the Arapaho Bend Natural Area. We parked at the Harmony Road Transfer Center for today's hike on a combination of paved and gravel trails.

We started our hike on one of the gravel trails, walking along the edge of one of the ponds, a former gravel pit.

The trails were a little bit muddy, but not too bad. For the next section of our hike, we opted to walk a section of paved trail. There were lots of views west to the mountains, with Mount Meeker and Longs Peak particularly prominent. 

Soon, we found ourselves at the ruins of the Strauss Cabin. There's a sad story associated with this building. It had been restored back in 1999, and then a few months later burned by arsonists.

From the cabin ruins, we followed the paved trail around the east side of the Rigden Reservoir, 

then we followed a wide, gravel path along the west side.

Once we had made our way around the reservoir, we opted to hike the gravel paths back to the trailhead. We passed more ponds, covered with ice.

We also walked along a short stretch of the Poudre River.

We admired a few interesting looking cottonwoods,

before returning to the car at the Transfer Center. 

We spent the rest of our day at Twin Silo Park and in Timnath. We had lunch at Backyard Bird: Chicken and Donuts (I enjoyed the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich) and got a couple of beer at Timnath Beerwerks.