Colorado Camping
We decided to take advantage of some “low” airfares and visit my sister Neha in Colorado over Labor Day weekend. We got in late Thursday night and I worked from home on Friday. Saturday morning we headed west toward Grand Junction, through the beautiful Glenwood Canyon and stopped for lunch in Glenwood. The geology in this part of Colorado is amazing – the canyons and mesas were truly unlinke anything I’d seen before.
We arrived at our campsite in Grand Mesa National Forest met Doyle and his kids, and set up camp just in time for some rain and hail. Luckily, it didn’t last long and the rest of the evening was pretty dry for hiking and cooking. Ian, Doyle, and I went out to explore the area’s lakes nearby, and when we returned, Ian and I hiked down a trail to one of the lakes. Ian later returned with the girls for a couple hours of fishing while the rest of us prepared the campsite for cooking, etc. We made some brats and corn for dinner, after nearly polishing off an entire bag of tortilla chips, salsa, and queso.
We woke up the next morning to quite a bit of rain. Since a campfire was pretty much out of the question, we set out to drive into town for some breakfast. Instead of stopping at a coffee shop, we went to a restaurant. We put in our order and drank coffee for an hour before they told us they couldn’t serve any food due to a fire earlier in the day. So we set back out on the road to Grand Junction to find a restaurant that a) wasn’t insanely crowded (Sunday church crowds I guess); and b) would actually serve food. Luckily we found the Good Pastures restaurant and had a delicious breakfast (and made use of their clean bathroom!).
We made our way to Palisade and stopped in at the Garfield Estates Winery – the owner lives in Neha’s neighborhood – and tasted some wine while the kids played on the tire swing. After that, we went back to our campsite, packed up our stuff, and went on a short hike around a lake. Doyle took his kids further up the hill for a different hike as we headed home. We stopped for coffee at Blink Coffee in Mesa and watched the downpour start. As we headed back towards I-70 we saw rainwater form brown waterfalls as it ran off the mesas.
We spent all day Monday doing some shed-building. We pretty much finished all the necessary carpentry, and all that should be left is painting. It’s actually a pretty simple shed built under a staircase; we just had to deal with some weird angles along the roof line.
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