Labor Day Weekend

Ok. I know I'm a week late on this one, but we have been busy.

Over Labor Day Weekend this year, we went camping and hiking near Winter Park, CO. Some friends of our went as well. We had 4 adults and 3 children camping in tents. It was really a lot of fun.

Our friends had been to the campsite before and suggested it. As it turns out, this site is not a marked site. It is just a spot in the woods. We went up the night before our friends and it took us a bit to find the site. The problem with finding it was that the road that was marked on the map didn't actually exist. We took a nice "scenic" drive up the mountain in th dark. Luckily we ran into some guys who were leaving the mountain. They explained that we were way out of the way of the campsite. To make a long story shorter, we eventually found the site and set up our tent via headlites.

The best part of the site was that it was completely in the woods but only about 5 miles from town. We were able to get up and go into town for a warm breakfast and coffee. After our breakfast we went back out to the campsite where we reset our tent (in a better location) and unpacked and organized. Then we went on a lovely 2 hour hike. By that time we were ready for lunch. We had lunch in town that day. We also walked around the shops in town. Our friends weren't scheduled to be to the camp until around 5 so we were just killing time. We were even lucky enough to get a nice nap in the woods.

That evening we went to a local rodeo. This was a very small town so the rodeo was definitely small town rodeo. It was reminiscent of the rodeos I went to every summer growing up. Campbell even got to participate in the rodeo. She entered the "Calf Scramble". The object of this was to pull a ribbon off of a calves tale. All children aged 6-12 were able to participate. They ended up with about 50 children vs. 10 calves. It was quite hillarious to see these kids running after the calves. Campbell did not get a ribbon but she got a t-shirt prize anyway. I guess she was just too cute in her skirt running after the calves. Her first words to us as she came back were "I got knocked over by a cow!"

The rest of the camping trip was your average camping trip. We made pancakes, eggs, and bacon over the fire (after roasting marshmallows for the first course of breakfast). Aaron made Frogmoore (sp?) stew over the fire during a rainstorm. We went on a couple more hikes. (We hiked about 16 miles over the course of the weekend.)

We had a fantastic weekend! Though we did learn that while all four of us can fit in a three man tent, we really do need a slightly larger tent to be a bit more comfortable. The kids had a great time and really enjoyed sleeping in the tent. It got very cool in the evenings but we came prepared for that so all was good. This is definitely something we will do again!

And it only took us a week to get everything put away!