A big camping trip

So Summer is here and Heather and I have committed ourselves to doing as many things as possible at every given opportunity. This means every weekend we are going to try to "do" something - big biking, trips, hikes, camping, etc. We basically get about six weekends to damage ourselves as much as possible until Shaun, Cindy, Quinn, and Abbey get here - then we try to damage all of the group!

Last weekend: CAMPING! We decided to drive the new, improved camping truck up to the Uncompaghre plateau for a weekend of camping, walking, and short bike rides. We chose a new area of the plateau which was farther south than our previous camps. Our general plan was to drive up to an area near the Roubideau trail and look for a spot. The drive up was on pavement, then smooth dirt then jeep road. It was uneventful except for Heather proclaiming that sitting in the front seat rather than the sideways-facing jump seat was a HUGE improvement for her. Also since we are in the middle of a very hot spell (102 in GJ on Saturday) the air-conditioning was a plus.
We arrived at the plateau around lunch so we pulled over and busted out the chairs and food:

Lunch (peanut butter and honey sandwiches) completed we moved on to our general destination and found a lovely campsite near the Roubideau Trail.

Hindsight told us that we should have looked for more shade as it was very sunny and hot even at +8,000 feet! The strange thing was that one or two weeks ago the whole area was probably still under snow.

We immediately set out on a series of walks short bike rides and creek play. We found a nice mountain stream about .5 miles from the tent, so we hooked up Cailan's trail-a-bike to my Chumba, Heather got on her Blur, and we rode the very bumpy jeep road down to the water. Cailan could (and would) play at a creek for several hours, so Heather and I took turns exploring the area with Utah.

We found lots of steep jeep roads and a pretty fun 3 mile loop to take turns riding. All that playing was hungry work so we headed back to cook up some angel hair pasta with pesto.

Then we took our traditional after dinner perambulation to see the evening sights.



We had an calm night which, given the fact that we had both Cailan AND Utah in the tent, was pretty amazing. The next morning Cailan actually said that he wanted to go for a walk! So we seized the moment.

Here you see Cailan and Heather having a "Dinosaur Hike". This is where Cailan picks a group of dinosaurs, then assigns each of us a specific dino, and we walk along pretending to be them.

You can see in this photo that we are three-fingered dinos. That would probably indicate either a group of Dromaeosaurs or Allosaurs. Suddenly, the dinos encountered some strange tracks!

Cailan has learned to identify deer, elk, and cow tracks - but not bear!
After that excitement we broke camp and drove off in search of more adventure. Our map showed some singletrack near a campground so we started towards the Iron Springs Campground. On the way we saw a lovely alpine snow-melt lake so we had a detour.

When we got near, we heard lots of noise coming from the lake - we must investigate!

I turns out that we had hit a big lekking season for the local frogs.

They were quite small but could make a tremendous amount of noise.

We then continued our little detour around the lake. This was not as easy as it might seem as there were several obstacles, including wetlands,



swamps,


and snow.

In the end we made it out after a great adventure!

After all of that we though we would have an uneventful couple of miles to the campground - but it was not to be. While we were at the lake I had noticed a cyclist going past. He was carrying enough gear that I thought he might be doing the Telluride to Moab San Juan Hut-to-hut trip which used the road we were driving on as part of it's route. Heather simply noted that he was going the wrong direction for that. As we drove to the campground we came up on the cyclist again, so I thought I would ask where he was going. He said: "from Mexico to Canada". This led to a delightful interlude where we towed him along for the two miles to the campground

and invited him to stop and eat. His name is Stefan (German) and this is his idea of a vacation. We broke out the food box and had lunch while we talked. You can see a bit of his journey at http://www.mtb-news.de/forum/showthread.php?t=460366&page=47
We also learned that he will eat just about anything, including the peanut butter-honey-grape sandwich he made. After all of this, we were finally at the campground and trail we had started out towards. During lunch Utah had gone wandering and come back wet and dirty, so we suspected that there was a water feature nearby. Heather and Cailan took off to explore that while I rode the "Aspen Trail": a motorcycle/biking/hiking trail of about 8 miles. It was a beautifully scenic loop trail that was unfortunately sandy and loose in many areas (sometimes happens on moto trails...). During the whole ride, I kept thinking that it would be better if I were doing the loop in the other direction, so when I rejoined H & C, I gave her directions to that effect. She assures me it was not that easy the other way either. We found an amazing "all uphill" loop!




We ended up not getting back to GJ until about 6:00pm so we dropped by Chipotle then went home and washed the whole family.

A good weekend - what's next?