Day eight in my “Leaving Loveland” challenge.

One of my big questions when we were thinking of moving from Minnesota to the Front Range of Colorado was, where are the lakes? Where can we swim? And when I asked this question in an online forum, the general consensus from Coloradoans was, you are moving to the high desert from the land of ten thousand lakes. Might need to lower your expectations a bit in that department.

And they were right. One of the things I’m looking forward to in returning to Minnesota is the water.

BUT, if you were to look for a relatively (in 2013 that is) affordable place to live on the Front Range and wanted to have some water to play in, you could do worse than Loveland. Right in the middle of town is Lake Loveland (um, really, there’s a website called lakeloveland.com?!), and it has a swim beach. Additionally, on the east side of town there’s actually a state park with a decent-sized lake that also has a swim beach, Boyd Lake State Park. Both of these beaches are easy bicycling distance from our house.

This is not a great photo of Lake Loveland, but it’s what I was able to snap as we walked out of our realtor’s office today after signing papers involving selling our house. That road is Highway 34, which runs along the south of the lake and goes all the way into Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park (except, unfortunately, for this year, when it’s closed for construction a few miles west of town).

One very different thing about lakes here from Minnesota, is that they don’t often maintain their water level all year round. The dry climate contributes to that, and in Lake Loveland’s case, so does the fact that the nearby city of Greeley owns the water rights to this lake, and will drain it as needed.

Here’s Lake Loveland just over a year ago, February 2016:

The kids and the dog enjoyed walking around the lakebed. Luthien found a safety cone and some sort of shell in this photo. Cody (the dog) found several dead fish.