Well, here it is. Our first attempt at long-term tent camping.
When we arrived at our site, both of us were extremely relieved. Beautiful scenery, FLAT tent pad, and best of all….shade.
I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking. We arrived around 5pm so we had plenty of time to get everything set up. Before I get too deep in pictures, I have to mention the bears. Neither of us are afraid of wildlife. If anything, we love scouting for critters, big and small. But, the bears were slowly coming out of hibernation in the valley and there was a lot of discussion over recent bear encounters. We were told by the park rangers to keep our food in our truck at all times, never leave food or trash out, and keep the truck doors locked. Thankfully, no bear encounters tonight.
Aspens as far as we could see. These are one of his favorite trees. You can see the white barks from miles away.
Tent set up! This is a HUGE tent, but we used every bit of it. Set up took about 15 minutes, including blowing up the air mattress.
Wildflowers in the background.
These 2 candles are worth every penny. No mosquito bites.
Give the man a knife, he will whittle. This is the fire poking stick.
Ring of Fire. Nobody fell in.
Leftover pizza from Breckenridge!
After dinner and clean up, I started the new Michael Pollan book, Cooked. More details on this one later.
The first night sitting around the camp fire, it was REALLY cold and I really wanted my Snuggie! I had a blanket, but it only warmed the front or the back. It wasn’t big enough to wrap all the way around and I needed the snuggie sleeves to read my book without freezing my arms. Next year, I’ll bring it!
But other than frozen toes, the night was perfection. When I got sleepy, I jumped in the sleeping bag designed for 0* temps, and I warmed up quickly. It may be cheating by sleeping on an air mattress, but I slept like the dead. So far, this camping thing is working out GREAT! And even better, Stephen is the breakfast maker. I have bacon to look for ward to.