up the poudre

Memorial day weekend camping time! Since I've had the past several months off, I headed up to Fort Collins early on friday to search out a good spot until the rest of the gang arrived. Lots of folks had the same idea, and for a while I got stuck in traffic behind the truck painting lines on the road. All the obvious spots were pretty much filled up, but more ground became available the further I went. I finally found this bridge that led to a dirt road with lots of secluded areas.

I settled on this one spot a short hike downhill from the road - even though we weren't near the river we had total seclusion. Luckily I had had cell reception if I stood on top of my car so I could radio my location to the others. I set up camp and started a fire, and when they arrived we got our fajita dinner started up. The weather started taking a turn from the nice sun we had earlier in the day, and we wound up with a cold drizzle the rest of the weekend - not what we had hoped but oh well! Luckily some psychos had cut down a ton of trees so firewood was bountiful.



Saturday afternoon we explored our surroundings on a hike.



We checked out the local fauna.



And came across a fresh deer hoof.



Likely food for whatever bear was using the trees as a scratching post.



We busted out some snacks and continued fueling the fire. Later that night we had a pasta dinner. By sunday morning we were ready to split, which was what we had originally planned. We stopped off in downtown Fort Collins at a brew pub for some lunch before heading home.



Chillaxed and aired out our gear sunday. Had a BBQ at hillside on memorial day proper.