Adventures in Camping

Hi again. It's been way too long, I know. Let's go back to the July 4th weekend. What were you up to?

Chris and I decided it was a great idea to go camping in the Colorado Rockies. So beautiful, peaceful and full of things to do. What we didn't realize was that you have to reserve your camping spot in around February - not June. I was amazed at how many campsites there were out there- and how many of them were booked. I quickly put a list together of all the first come first serve sites that were close in proximity. Chris and I wanted to go camping so badly that we were willing to drive out to the mountains and just start looking for an open spot. If there weren't any, we were ready to camp completely primitive in random designated areas. Lo and behold we found an AWESOME spot in the first place we looked. It was perfect - had a river 15 feet behind the site, had restrooms close by and were in the middle of a pine forest. Completely great!

If you are from Texas, you may think that it's going to be miserable and hot. Well - not in the Rockies. It was in the 70's in the daytime, quite cool in the evenings, and in the brisk 40's at night. I even had to wear my ski jacket to keep warm since the fire just didn't quite do it. :-)

We were thrilled. The next day, we went fishing in Lake Grandby (next to Rocky Mountain National Park) and came back to our site to wait for our good friends Trey and Emily to arrive. Chris and I were sitting in our chairs contemplating the views and our dog, Chancho, was running around exploring all the great smells. As we were lounging, we started to look at the trees and found that every tree had deep bear claw marks in them. Chris and I stood up to inspect the gashes and Chancho started to go crazy - hopping up and down and just acting nervous while looking at our neighbors site. Well, we turned around to our neighbor's site and found that they had a hairy friend visiting them. A BLACK BEAR!!!

This is how we found him - eating our neighbors food they left out (rookies!)This is the bear going back to their site to get more food. What he would do was go to their coolers/bags and get what it wanted and would go by the river to eat and would do this process several times.

So, what did we do when we first saw the bear? RUN to our car! Well, that's not what you are supposed to do, but it caught us off guard. We put Chancho in the car, and when we felt it was safe, we got out and would stare at it eat from afar. Chris did get closer to take some pictures (typical tourists!). It was actually really cute. All it cared about was eating, not attacking, so we felt safe after a while. Once it finally left, we found it had selected a tub of butter, hamburger patties, bacon, half a bag of tortillas, and two apples to eat. He left all the other fruit and veggies. Typical. hehe

Oh, and I totally forgot to tell you how close it was. It was in the next site - about 30 feet away. Way too close for comfort.

From there, we struggled to decide whether or not we'd tell our friends since we didn't know if they'd get too scared to camp, but we ended up telling them. It was so great to finally see a bear close up though. I always wanted that experience.

We also saw a female moose the next day - she was in the river that ran right next to our campsite. We didn't get a picture of her though. We got to see some great fireworks in Grand Lake that night which was awesome because they were right in front of some mountains and reflected off the lake, which made it magical. The next day, we went hiking and fishing.

On the last day, we went fishing and left our tent and canopy up so they can dry up - it rained the evening and night before. But when we came back from our fishing trip, we saw hail all over the ground and it was still raining pretty hard.
That was our great camping trip. Full of adventures, unexpected twists, and great company. We do plan to go camping again - perhaps in September. The Grand Canyon and Arches - here we come!

One last thought - we love Colorado.