Steamboat Springs and Camping!

Thursday July 10^th, 2014
Vacation time…again. Wait, weren’t we just on a seven day vacation just earlier this week? Summer is the best! And having a husband who is so willing to take time off during the summer is pretty nice too! This time we headed to Steamboat Springs for the Colorado Vision Conference and Jadeyn and I got to tag along. We decided to go by way of Rocky Mountain National Park so we could enjoy the scenery and maybe see some animals. We kept our eyes open, but didn’t see any on the first half of the park. Once we crossed the summit, we started to see them: elk, deer, marmot, chipmunk and a moose! It was great! We stopped and had sandwiches by a beaver pond and Jadeyn entertained us! Onto the rest of the trip. Here is where the car in front of us swerved and missed a small skunk. And then, we were just driving along and a pretty large black bear ran right out in front of us! Kevin swerved and the bear pulled up just enough that we missed him by about five feet! That is two close calls with two bears in one week in two states! Its only the second bear we have ever seen in Colorado too! Crazy!
We made it to Steamboat and located our hotel. It is the Steamboat Grand and grand it is! Out room was massive!!! It was a condominium with a huge king bed, large bathroom, full living room and dining room and full kitchen and a little corner office! Wow! Now this is living. Pretty nice digs!
 
Friday, July 11^th, 2014
Today felt like two days crammed into one because we did so much. We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and hot chocolate. Yum. Kevin’s class started at 8am and me and Jadeyn tried to figure out what we should do. Jadeyn’s favorite part was a nice little creek that we waded in for about an hour and a half. It was one of those freezing freezing creeks that you can only handle for a few seconds before you had to jump out! But after about 10 minutes, we were numb enough to be able to wade and splash around!
 
We got back to the hotel in time to have lunch with Kevin. He ended up with a two hour break, so we took him down to show him the creek. We walked through the hotel, checked out the pool area, and had fun. Right when Kevin went back to class and Jadeyn and I got on our swimsuits, the thunder started! Dang! They closed the pool! So we played on the Kindles, read and worked on his words until the pool opened again. We had so much fun! Jadeyn spent most of the time doing cannon balls, climbing out, another cannon ball over and over again! I chased him around. Then we warmed up in the chairs until KABOOM! Lightening again. Closed again. But we had a whole hour and a half of fun. It was amazing to watch that storm develop. It literally rolled in and the lightening got closer and closer, until it was less than a mile away. The thunder rocked the hotel. Then the rain began. It started as hail and then just down poured so hard. Wow. The temperature seriously dropped about 15 degrees! While we waited out h storm, we started watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and he loved it and giggled and laughed so hard. By the time we looked outside again, the sky was blue, no wind and the only sign of the storm was the massive puddles! Tonight we had pizza and a movie night. Pizzas made on crescent rolls and watched Wreck It Ralph. So much fun. Jadeyn drank an entire soda all by himself! He said he was in heaven!

Saturday, July 12, 2014
Last day of the conference. We woke up and enjoyed a delicious breakfast of French toast. It has been so fun to have a hotel room with a complete kitchen. We have taken full advantage of it for sure. Kevin left for class at 8 so it was up to me and Jadeyn to pack up and get everything loaded into the Jeep. We had fun though.  We went with Kevin to the Vendor show so he could talk to a few of the vendors about some new machines. Everyone thinks Jadeyn is just the cutest boy so he got lots of free stuff. And he felt like it was Halloween going from booth to both getting free mugs, pens, balls and umbrella and of course candy. We had a nice catered lunch to before hitting the road. Kevin really enjoyed the conference this year and had so many positive things to say about the speakers. We hit the road and that’s where the adventure begins!

Our plan was to take a trail up to a campground or continue over the pass to the less busy campgrounds. Well, there was a sign up at the start of the trail that said that the trail was closed at the second gate due to snow. OH man. Well, we drove up there anyway just to be sure. The drive was beautiful, but yup, it was closed. Humm. Plan B. Let’s just say that five campgrounds later…seriously, every campground was full! We drove all over, talked to every camp host. We finally found an isolated campground for only $10. Do you know how long it has been since we have camped for that cheap? It’s not a bad place and there are only three or four other groups here. We set up camp and took a nice walk and saw several deer, woodpeckers, and hummingbirds all over. When evening came, we made a huge fire and enjoyed s’mores. Tonight is the night of a “super moon.” Apparently it is when a full moon falls on a day when the moon is the closest to the earth in its orbit. We wanted to stay up to watch the moonrise and we weren’t disappointed. It came up around 11pm and as t rose over the mountain, it was beautiful!
 
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Aaahh, nice to wake up in a tent again. It feels like it has been awhile since we have been out camping.  We totally expected to get dumped on during this weekend while camping, but the weather has been spectacular. It has been the warmest we have camped in Colorado in years! We enjoyed granola and hot chocolate for breakfast and then headed to Hahn’s Peak Lake to see if the fish were biting. This lake reminded me so much of Warm Lake that I grew up swimming in. The water was warm and there were kids everywhere with floating toys and a few fishermen too. There were even some people on standup canoes paddling around. But unfortunately, not a single bite. Jadeyn entertained himself though throwing seeds and pebbles at water skippers. Then Kevin threw rocks at him and he deflected them with a “rock shield.” Pretty fun.
 
Next we headed to Hahn’s Peak itself. We have wanted to do this trail in the Jeep and hope that the trail is tame enough to go to the top. The aspen groves were are incredible. The trees are so tall, the wildflowers are in full bloom. It is so beautiful! The trail was mostly loose skree or rock, but we did just fine in the Jeep.  We parked at a pull out and decided to hike the rest of the way up.  It was nice to get some exercise. It was nice and steep and very loose rock so it was entertaining to watch Jadeyn slip and go down occasionally and still not figure out that if there is a patch of dirt without rocks: that’s the best place to walk! The view from the top was breath-taking. The visibility was so far, we could see the ski slopes of Steamboat and the lush green hills and mountains below. Wow. Even though it was only about a mile and a half (but pretty steep) we were a little wiped out so we went back to camp for lunch and to kick back for a few minutes before hitting the trail again.

Next we found a bike/hike trail that lead to the Elk River. It was a great easy trail that wound through meadows, aspens, pine trees etc. And once again, the wildflowers were everywhere. Jadeyn entertained us by turning every weed he found into some kind of weapon or missile. It was a challenge hiking on a single track trail with him since we kept running into him every time he would stop to pick something or he would poke us in the back with a stick when we decided to put him behind us! Funny. We made it down to the river and yup, it was pretty swift but Kevin fished any way and he and Jadeyn caught some sweet brook trout. There was even a very nice sized one too! Jadeyn had become fascinated by all the flowers and spent some time dissecting them to find the pollen inside and then combining all the pollen into one flower bud so some unsuspecting bee might come along and pollinate the entire forest! The

hike back was full of sword fights and hide and seek sabotage between Kevin and Jadeyn. I will forever have this memory in my mind from each of the hikes we have been on: seeing Kevin up ahead on the trail, and Jadeyn running down the trail after him with a stick in one hand and hiking his pants up while he runs with the other hand!!

Back at camp we enjoyed a nice dinner of chicken quesadillas on the grill. The campground was completely deserted since everyone went home for the weekend. We took an evening drive to see wildlife and holy cow! We saw so many deer and most of them were beautiful bucks in full velvet! We have been amazed at how many deer we have seen. There was even a group of six bucks all in a field together. Wow. Back at camp we had a huge bonfire compliments of the wood Jadeyn scrounged up. And we popped pop corn over the fire as well! Delicious. We all went into the tent at about 10pm tonight since last night we stayed up so late. Fun day.

Monday, July 14, 2014
We woke up to a completely empty and serene campground. Just us and four deer. Kevin took a look around and said: Monday in an empty campground; I could get used to this!! Blueberry pancakes for breakfast. A nice relaxing morning, cleaned up and packed up camp and we were out of there by 9:45. On our way home we decided to go to Rocky Mountain National Park again. It’s so nice to have been able to take the scenic route through the park; so much more beautiful than the highway! We stopped and had lunch in a beautiful meadow: peanut butter sandwiches and soda. We continued our wildlife search and again we not disappointed. There were huge elk everywhere! Wow! We went up to the top visitor’s center and then to the Alpine trail that we love so much. It winds up through all the alpine tundra and millions of microscopic wildflowers up to what feels like the top of the world. You can get such an incredible 360 degree view of all the mountains surrounding us and I think you can even see Wyoming!

 Besides the elk, we got to see pikas and marmots (which made me happy!) On the drive home, we went by highway 7 because of flood construction on the other route, so we got to see the back of Lyons again. That town was hit the hardest of all the towns by the flood. It is still so devastating to see the beautiful river and see the banks torn up and eroded from the water. Wow. Nice to be home again and get cleaned up. Newt was happy to see us. We wandered the yard and saw that we are going to have to do quite a bit of yard work this week since everything is growing so fast, a lot will need to be trimmed back! Nice evening!