Bugs and snow and bears… oh my!

This past weekend we finally had the chance to go camping! We love, love, love camping but we’ve been so busy this summer that we haven’t had a free weekend to do it. We went to one of our favorite spots a few hours away and we were surprised to find…

…snow! There wasn’t too much but is was all over the campground. Maybe that area didn’t get the memo that it is the middle of July! We had a great time setting up camp, cooking some fun new camp recipes (I’ll share those in a separate post), taking pictures, hiking and geocaching!

We found a nice trail to hike on Saturday and it even had a geocache at the end! On our way back to the car we heard a rustling and grumbling noise coming from just a little ways off the trail. Dave an I both stopped dead in our tracks and listened for more sounds. We heard more grumbling but it stopped so we carefully carried on down the trail and started talking so that we wouldn’t startle any wild animal around. We stopped again when the noise started up again, seemingly closer that it was last time. Gulp! It stopped and we continued walking and talking until we finally came to a clearing near the end of the trail where we saw this:

I don’t know what you think, but that looks like a bear print to me! I am so glad we got out of there before we saw the bear, and before the bear saw us!

The bugs were out in full force and I received no less than 20 mosquito bites even though I drenched myself in bug spray and had nearly every kind of mosquito repellent going around me (Off! candles, mosquito coils, etc.). Even poor Gromit has bite marks on his belly from ants and, possibly, ticks. We had to take him to the vet yesterday to be looked at because he had bite marks that looked like bullseyes. The vet put him on antibiotics to prevent Lyme disease in case he was bitten by ticks. Poor baby!

Despite the snow and bugs and scary moments, we had a wonderful time camping and I can’t wait until we get to do it again!

It sounds like they’re right outside…

Last weekend Dave and I started our weekend early and headed out to Rocky Mountain National Park to get in one last weekend of camping before the weather turns and it’s too cold to go. Our hope was to spend a few days enjoying the mountains and to hopefully catch some bugling elk while in the park. Turns out we got much more than we bargained for.

On on first morning there we were woken up around 6:30 to some really loud elk bugling. I mean, REALLY loud. I turned to Dave and said, “it sounds like they’re right outside!” Dave agreed and we slowly unzipped the tent door to see an entire elk herd right in our campsite! We slowly got out of the tent, leashed Gromit and grabbed the cameras. The herd moved through the campsite and we followed them for a good hour just taking pictures and video and enjoying the view. We saw some younger bulls try to challenge the big bull but the little guys were easily scared off with a little charge from the big bull. It was amazing to watch and such a unique experience that I doubt we’ll ever get again.

We spent much of the weekend driving around the park and enjoying the beautiful mountains, wildlife, crazy tourists and trees beginning to change colors. On Friday we drove up Old Fall River Road to the Alpine Visitor’s center where it was snowing a little bit. Luckily that was the only place there was snow and the weather the rest of the weekend was gorgeous. We took tons of pictures of the scenery. Here are a few of our favorites.

 

No camping trip in our family would be complete without at least one hike and this trip was no different. We took a beautiful but sort of eerie hike around Monarch Lake near Grand Lake. I don’t know why, but I was really feeling spooked by wildlife on the hike. I was on alert for bears and moose for no good reason and it, to some extent, ruined the hike for me. It didn’t help that at the beginning of the trail there were signs telling us that the lake trail was clearly marked with arrows but we didn’t see one arrow until at least halfway through the hike and there were very few other hikers we ran into to assure us we were going the right way. I just felt lost and scared the whole time. We did see some snakes on the trail and I totally freaked out. Thank goodness Dave is a patient man and put up with my unnecessary fear.

On the drive back to the campsite I actually got some cell coverage so I decided to see if there were any geocaches in the area and sure enough there was one along the road we were driving on! As soon as we got close to the cache we stopped the car and took a little hike to find it. It wasn’t a hard find and we were able to quickly sign the log, exchange trinkets and get back to the campground before it was dark.

Another thing we like to do all the time is take pictures of Gromit. Here are a few of our favorites from this camping trip.

Now that I have camped for the last time this year I feel like Fall is officially around the corner. It’s hard to believe it is actually coming with this 80-90 degree heat but the weather forecasters assure me cooler temperatures are on the way. I’ve resisted the coming of the new season because I feel like I am still recuperating from the snow storms this spring and I am not ready for cold weather again. But I finally gave in to everything I love about the season and changed my blog theme, Twitter background and started to decorate our home for Fall. So goodbye summer and hello cool weather and warm, inviting decorations. I just hope the snow doesn’t come too soon!

Camping, hiking and Geochacing

This past weekend was awesome - so awesome that is has taken me a few days to get this blog post up about it because I've been so busy cleaning up and catching up since we arrived home!

We left on Friday night to a campsite we had never been to before. We have hiked around there several times but have never stayed so we thought we'd give it a try. It was beautiful! A nice wooded area not too affected by the beetle kill and not too close to other sites. Bliss! We recently purchased a new tent, a 3-season 4-man tent that we were anxious to try out. The tent we have been using for the last four years is a 7-man generic tent which has been great for having friends camp with us and for when the weather is warm (it is mostly mesh with a light rainfly), but we were looking for something a little smaller for when just Dave and I went camping by ourselves - and this seems to do the trick.

On Saturday morning we attended a park ranger talk about Geocaching. We kind of knew what it was but were uncertain of the details and we learned a lot in this little class. Basically what you do is visit a website listing all of the Geocaches world-wide and you search for some near you. You enter the coordinates on a GPS device and away you go! The GPS only shows you the direction in which the cache is from where you are located and doesn't guide you along trails so you have to be the one to follow the actual trail until you get close to the cache location. When you get close you search for the cache which can be any sort of air-tight container containing, well, almost anything. The idea is that you find the cache, open it, log your visit in the logbook and then you have the option to take a trinket from the cache but only if you brought along something to put into the cache for someone else to find. I like to think of Geocaching as hiking with a purpose or as a treasure hunt.

That afternoon we went to find our first Geocache. The trail which led to the cache ended up being longer, steeper and harder to do than we anticipated. I hadn't been feeling well the last couple of days and a few miles into the hike I started feeling dizzy, light-headed and nauseated. The sky was also beginning to look like rain so we decided to turn around and head back down the mountain without finding the cache. But before we left I got this fantastic picture of a sun dog (an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun).

We tried another trail with a cache on it on Sunday and successfully located that cache! Wahoo, our first cache!

We left a new container of "Moose Smooch" lip balm in exchange for a moose postcard, signed the log and headed back down the trail to head home; but after we made Gromit try on the pair of kiddie sunglasses left in the cache.

It was a great weekend of trying new things and I'm sure we'll be Geocaching in the future. It looks like there of plenty of Geocaches along the trails in our town!