Hunting for Archeology near Boulder CO, Day 3 - Gold Lake

Before visiting Boulder I picked some places that looked worth exploring for arrowheads. One was the Pawnee Grasslands, just to see what was out there (see here); one was Rabbit Mountain (see here) because there were springs and the hope of finding game trails. On the third day, with my wife, son, and son's girlfriend, we explored what I hoped was a gentle valley within the Rocky Mountain National Park. I was hoping for an upland environment that was not strenuous for hiking, looked around the topo map and picked Gold Lake. 

Gold Lake, east of Ward CO, is a private campground. Later I decided that $210 for a night and three meals, would have been cheaper than staying at a hotel. Anyway, we ran into a guard who warned us off, and told us a few things about the area. I mentioned we were looking for arrowheads [you never know what you might learn] and he said this place, Gold Lake, was where the Arapahoe Chief Niwot spent summers. So my choice was a good one. All of the lake, and especially the northern shore, are private and closed. It turned out that south of the lake was national park with "unrestricted camping". So we drove over there and spent a couple hours poking around and trespassing, by sneaking in to look at the lakeshore, from a spot that could not be seen from the north. An artificial lake, they had drained it a bit:

Fire rings:

Debitage:

Gosh, I wanted to walk along that beach! The white stuff is, again, chalcedony - a form of SiO2 that has different structure from crystalline quartz. 

I think this is not quartz but not sure. Two pieces of worked edge, lying next to each other on the sand, seemed to fit together like a "plausible blade reconstruction". I doubt this is plausible, but you can get a sense of what an arrowhead might have looked like:

And that was as close as I got to finding an arrowhead in CO. Joe and Leah walked around for a while and found beautiful bits of quartz and chert but nothing complete. Joe reported finding a black feather with orange paint on it (making me think the Indians might still be around). I think we had fun and had some great pizza in Nederland on the way home.