(If you don't want to read this book, you might want to wait for the movie. LOL.....)
I've spent the majority of my birthdays camping. I shared a birthday with my Grandpa (and, oh how I miss him on our birthday!) and camping was an activity that everyone in the family enjoyed. It's nice having a summer birthday to be able to spend it outdoors like that. This last birthday weekend, I had a few options for activities, but what I really wanted to do was go camping. So, we packed up our trailer and kids and headed up to the mountains to explore a new part of Colorado. I'd spent the previous few days with my Colorado guide book, Colorado camping book and reserveamerica website. The conclusion was we'd be pretty darn lucky to get a site anywhere.
As we pulled into our first choice campground (after having to stop three times for potty breaks within half an hour of home--kids!!-- and twisting my shoulder out of socket trying to reach snacks to quiet said kids), we found the campground hosts and inquired about any open spots. Their response: hearty laughter. OK, we knew our chances were slim but we didn't know we had to start planning our summer weekends right after New Year's festivities. Sheesh. OK, upon taking their advice, we headed north up the road about half an hour. I'd say one of my favorite moments of the weekends transpired on this drive. As we were rounding a bend, I looked down and spotted a marshy lake and said, "Wow, if you were ever to see a moose that would be the place!". Holy moose--- I then spotted not one, but two moose emerging from the trees walking toward the lake. The first moose was BIG, but the bull following it was almost double its size! AMAZING! The lake was not too far off the road, so it was the best 50 mph show I'd ever seen. That incident boosted our spirits and propelled us to the next campground. We pulled in, found the campground host, again asked for a space, again heard him laugh and say "We're FULL!". Crap. Crap, crap, crap. SIGH. Then after a little hesitation (we could already tell this guys was a jokester) he clarified that they had been full, but one couple had just picked up camp and left because of sickness (altitude sickness apparently) leaving one space available and after we filled it the campground would again be full. WHEW!!! We snuck in by the hair on our chinny, chin, chins!
It was a beautiful spot. I'd read about this campground in my camping book and was a little concerned because it said that, as we know, every spot is full on the weekends and it can be busy because the main road to the trailheads went right through the middle of the campground. Well, beggars can't be choosers. At midnight, we were all woken up by what sounded like diesel drag racing. Emalie woke up crying and refused to go to bed for quite sometime after the sounds subsided. She was scared and we were tired and annoyed. Somehow, Nik slept through the whole thing. Sven finally got her back to sleep, only to be woken at 6 AM with, "Mommy, Daddy! I'm up now!!!" Good grief.....happy birthday to me. I see how this day is going to go.
We decided to drive back to the lake that was where our first choice campground had been. OK, so we couldn't camp at the lake, but that doesn't mean we can't spend the day there fishing and hiking. We drove up the 5 miles off the main road and took our turn at the end of a long line of cars. What was going on?! Well, apparently, the forest rangers hadn't "opened the parking lots yet" (what does that even mean?) and there was a one car out, one car in procedure in place. We were more than welcome to sit in line (and waste our day) until we could get into the park. Snort. Bark. Hmph! Fine. Whatever. There was no way I was spending my birthday sitting in the truck waiting for our turn to have some fun. So, we turned around, once again, and headed back to camp. We packed up our lunches and headed up the mountain from our campground in search of a lake that Sven saw on his GPS. We hiked for miles and miles and well over an hour. Both kids had fishing poles in hand, and I'd never seen Nik hike so fast or so willingly. It was a beautiful hike and I lagged behind taking pics of the flowers. Although we were all super hungry, we were saving our lunches for that serene moment when we arrived at the lake and could eat in peace and tranquility. Every 15 minutes, Sven would check his GPS and say, "just another 1/4 mile up the hill"....yes, he said that EVERY time he checked his GPS. Hmmm......Nik and I were becoming a little skeptical by this time. But, alas, what is that we see...? A lake? The lake! We did it! We made it!! Walk, walk, walk..... What is that we see..... a boat? A ROAD?! What?! Where is our isolated mountain lake that took us so long to hike to? Well, ok, let's just find a place to have our lunch and Nik to get his hook wet. What is that..... a PRIVATE PROPERTY sign? What?! Walk, walk, walk..... more private property signs. You have GOT to be kidding me!!!! As the trucks, ATVs, and people passed, they explained this was a lake that was privately leased by the American Legion. No difference to them that our kids had just hiked over 2 miles up the mountain and Sven had on a military issued hat. Nope. Nobody's fishing here today, folks....well, at least not us.
Well, well, you can imagine the scene that took place as we hiked back down the mountain, dry fishing poles in hand. It wasn't pretty. By this time I had decided that this definitely wasn't the best birthday ever. Not only that, but I realized I hadn't even packed up my bottle of wine to make this day seem a little bit better at the end. Nope. Just 2 more miles to hike back down the mountain with a kid who's extremely ticked off, a 4-year old who refuses to take one more step, and a swarm of bugs that would make me think we're in Alaska and not the bug-free Colorado I've come to know. Sigh.
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| Walking a mile (or 2 or 4) in my 41-year old shoes (ok, not the shoes, but the feet...). |
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| Emalie had to do everything her brother did right down to wetting her hair in the creek. |
We finally made it back to camp, and Nik did some fishing off the bridge. I guess the scene would have been more informative had I taken a photo of the rushing river below as well. Let's just say that after all of that, fishing off the bridge was useless because the water was so fast and powerful. He kept getting snagged and losing hooks. Oh forget it. We give up for today. We truly give up for the day. Happy Birthday to me.
All was not lost though, I did have my mini-gluten-free strawberry pie that I had made for myself (truly for myself, after this day and with no wine, I didn't even have the desire to share....but, good mommies always share. Sigh......) The candle did make me smile. Nik had spent his own money to buy me this '29 again' candle. Cute. Really.
And all the troubles of the day slipped away after a few laughs with the kids. Having these photos of me and the kids made it all worthwhile. Sven didn't even clue me in to what my birthday present was.....that hadn't been delivered by UPS before we left. Oh well, just add that to the list.......
It's a new day, it's a new day! It has to be better than yesterday. We took the advice of our jokester campground host and headed up to an area called Rainbow Lakes. We wanted to see if it was as beautiful as he said, and maybe, just maybe we could spend our last night there if it was. It was a 5 mile bumpy, narrow dirt road up to the campground. The cherry on top of that was the cars, trucks, and horse trailers parked alongside the road (and on both sides at times) making for very narrow passage up the mountain. But when we finally arrived, we were taken aback with the beauty of it! We talked to the campground host who was willing to save a spot for us until we could make the transfer, and enjoyed a picnic lunch along the creek that ran through it. We were excited to leave Peaceful Valley (that was anything but peaceful) and move to this new location. So, we headed back, hooked up our trailer.....in the rain.....and made the trek back up the windy, bumpy, narrow dirt road missing one of the horse trailers (parked on a sharp curve at that) by inches. This is definitely a turning point for the weekend, right?
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| The view out of the trailer window at our new camping spot at Rainbow Lakes. |
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| Emalie 'fishing' in the small offshoot of the creek that ran through the back of our site. |
Well, not exactly a turning point in a positive direction. Once we got our trailer settled and we took a moment to have a cup of tea and relax, we took the advice of the campground host and crossed the creek to hike up to the first lake. We had to get Nik to a lake where he could fish. After 15 minutes of walking, the sky darkened and within minutes it was raining....hard. We ended up grouping together under a tree for a good half hour waiting for the storm to pass and the rain to subside. The hike after the rain shower was very wet, soggy, and laden with uprooted trees and low branches. It was definitely off the beaten path. Well....the human beaten path. The host had warned us about the moose activity in this area and to be careful at dawn and dusk when the moose came out and walked along the creek. Crap! Yes, it was getting close to dusk, it was already fairly dark with the cloudy skies overhead, and everywhere we saw....yep..... moose poop. (As Emalie has coined, "moose beans".) I must say that's the first time in a long time that I've been in the wilderness and actually had a real sense of fear. (It didn't help that Nik kept quoting statistics about the number of deaths each year caused by moose vs. sharks.) So if all that isn't fun enough, when we finally climbed high enough to reach the lake, we were dismayed to see that we were stuck on the marshy side and the lake was not reachable without hiking all the way around it (which there was no time for given it was already starting to get dark). Ok-- here we go again. You can only imagine how ticked Nik was this time after not once, but TWICE, hiking to a lake he couldn't fish at. He tried fishing in the marshy waters, but he not only lost his lures but managed to catch Sven (and tear a big chunk of skin out of his arm) in the process. Emalie even managed to lose her little fake fish at the end of her line during all the commotion of Nik catching Sven. (And we were at a loss to find it, because she didn't even know if it was on land or in the water where she lost it.) Man, this just really wasn't turning out so well. So, take two of everyone climbing down the mountain like a mad pack of wolves. So, instead of hiking down on the side we climbed up, we decided to cross over the creek to the side of the trail and campground (by the way, we didn't know that the trail went up the campground side of the creek until we saw hikers coming down it when we were stuck under a tree in the rain. Oh the fun......). Sven found a log crossing the rushing creek and tested it out for us. Well, that was the plan. What actually happened was he fell in, cut his legs, twisted his ankle, got soaking wet and......sigh.....lost his wedding ring. REALLY?! Are we having fun yet?!
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| The proof's in the.....beans. |
The weekend's not over yet.....unfortunately because by this point we're all getting really tired of living Murphy's Law. We continued down the same trail (obviously we weren't able to cross over to the campground side until we go to our original cross-over point) and made it back to camp minutes before the clouds gave way again to another storm. We had our dinner, and when it again stopped raining we headed out for a walk. Much to our surprise, it was cold!! As we were walking, I couldn't believe I was seeing my breath. Yeah, my hardiness was wearing thin and I was in no mood to sit out in the cold watching and waiting for the moose to pass through our 'backyard'. Again, disappointment..... I had really wanted to see and photograph moose!
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| Nik brought his pole along for our evening walk and attempted to get a few casts in. |
Hooray, hooray, it's another day! We awoke to beautiful skies, a beautiful camping spot and a few hours before we had to pack up and leave. This time, we headed to the lake via the trailhead and bypassed the creek altogether. It was an easy hike (though by day 3 Emalie refused to hike at all. Again, Poor Sven who had to carry her.). We were at the lake within half an hour, and up to the second lake beyond that within an hour. It was beautiful. And, because it was a Monday, we didn't have to fight the crowds that we had all weekend. It was finally peaceful. Nik did a little fishing, Em did a little splashing, I did a LOT of photo-taking and Sven oversaw it all. We were actually disappointed that we had to head home that afternoon. We'd finally found a spot we enjoyed that had activities for everyone (and we hadn't seen the moose yet!).
After the lakes, we found the trail down the campground side of the creek. Nik did some more fishing (but no catching) and I enjoyed taking pics of the cascading creek.
Back at camp, we had time for the campfire that we hadn't had the night before. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows before packing up. I'm so glad we were able to end this Griswold Birthday Vacation on a lighter note. It felt like we had been gone for 10 days and not 3. I left at 40 and came back feeling 50. Oh, what a weekend it was. I'm not sure how the planets misaligned to create such a weird few days.
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| I had never seen a BearSaver before. How crazy is that? I'll stick with our hard-sided trailer, thank you. |
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| Our 'backyard' view. |
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| The perfect spot to end such an imperfect camping trip. |
Well, now we know where we'd like to go next time. The only catch? We can't go on the weekends! It's a first come, first serve campground with no reservations (like we bother to make those, right?!). The host said to not even try coming unless we arrive on a Monday or Tuesday. I guess that's what you've got to deal with when you and the 6 million other people on the Front Range have the same idea. Boy, we're not in Montana anymore, Toto.......
For the scenery images from this weekend, go here:
