Camping!!

We have lived in Colorado, the state of huge, beautiful mountains for over a year now and we FINALLY made it out for our inaugural camping trip.  It was quite a chore getting the camper ready and mom was so out of practice that she forgot to pack to marshmallows!  We ended up stopping at a gas station on the way to get them 'cause you can't camp without s'mores!  She did remember the beer though so not all was lost.

We went camping at the Arkansas River Headwater recreation area.  It wasn't quite the pine tree/mountain site we were hoping for but it grew on us pretty quickly.  We had a nice secluded sight that was a short walk from the river with amazing views of Mt. Princeton and another "fourteener" that we don't know the name of.  Mom loaded the camera up with all kinds of pictures of them.

We barely got ourselves settled when I dragged everyone down to the river for some fishing.  I am a fishing machine and couldn't get enough, even though I didn't catch a single thing all weekend.  That was not for lack of trying though.  We started at the river by our campsite, drove to another fishing site, then another.

We ended our day of fish hunting here at Hecla Junction which was very, very pretty but had no fish.  We managed to catch a dog fish named Haile and two shoe fish but nothing we could actually eat.

We finally headed back to our campsite, started up the fire and got to cooking s'mores.  A good day!

We had a really good night sleep (which isn't saying much because we never sleep well camping so anything more than an hour or two of sleep, counts as good) and started the day with more fishing.  This time, mom and I headed down to the river but mom isn't as good at this fishing thing as dad is.  She won't touch the worms and I won't either so we weren't expecting much.

After breakfast, we headed to the town of Salida so dad could get in a practice bike ride before his Sunday race.  Mom and I hung out at the park with Haile, wandered around the farmer's market and soaked up small town Colorado.
When dad was done riding, he found us a nice fishing lake.  Everyone else was catching trout left and right.  Except for us.  It was another bad day for us.

 (This is what happens when your dog is almost 14, spends most of her day sleeping in her kennel and her family decides to take her camping/hiking.  You get a dog so exhausted she won't move from the floor of camper)

We spent the a lot of the afternoon in our camper waiting out the thunderstorm but it was really relaxing and we caught up on some napping and some card playing.

On Sunday, dad entered the Colorado State Bike Championship so we spent the morning cheering him on and then headed home.

We were tired and dirty and smelly but it was a great weekend and we are planning our next one.  With marshmallows.