Author: Bryan

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

This morning we pick up our first backcountry camping permit before driving into Estes Park for breakfast and to pick up our bear canister. We resolve a strange mixup about the container, buy Bryan a funny collapsible Chinese hiking hat thing, and hurry back to Moraine Park to pack up camp. At the Park and Ride lot, we disgorge the entire contents of the Subaru into the parking area. After packing for our first two-night loop, we catch the shuttle to the trailhead.

It’s a great day. The sky is blue with cheerful puffy clouds, the mountains are beautiful, and the temperature is perfect: slightly too warm when hiking but slightly chilly when we stop. There are lots and lots of people crowding the trails for the first two or three miles, though past Fern Falls the tourists thin out. I begin to think we won’t make it to camp before dark, but after the trail junction at Fern Lake our path to Spruce Lake goes mostly downhill and we make good time. The spruce trees here look silly, like pines with heavy bodies and short arms. We’ve walked about five miles in about five hours, which isn’t bad considering that we have heavy loads and we’ve walked uphill all day; we’re at nearly 10,000 feet now. We have the tents up and water boiling before night falls on our own private lake.

The privies at these campsites are well done; Mandy says “Haha! I peed in a can in the woods!” There are no structures at all, just a dugout hole below a plywood platform and a metal toilet with a cover, facing away from the trail into the woods. Mandy’s up first this morning, racing down to the lake with her camera before coming back to her tent to read a bat book. The lake is beautiful in the morning light: the trout swim in clear water under the glass-calm surface, rimmed with spruce, framed in mountains. We lie in the warm orange tent enjoying the stillness before a busy day.

A little later, we cook breakfast next to the lake and then lie on a big warm rock together at the edge of the water, dozing in the sunshine.

The hike out to Fern Lake is pleasant; the trail builders have laid half-timbers across the marshy spots where wildflowers still bloom. It’s a dry, breezy day, and there’s lots of traffic on the main trail here; we stop for a snack at the ranger patrol cabin before walking along the edge of the lake. Sitting next to her baby carrier, a mom rests on the shore of the lake nursing her baby. (She’s at least five miles from a trailhead: good for her!)

We stop at Odessa Lake for lunch and to pump water. The chipmunks here are convinced that we’re cooking just for them and we have to keep a close eye on our packs and lunches. We’ve been walking through postcards all day, quiet lakes reflecting green trees, with treeline not far above us, topped with layers of rock and snow and deep blue summer sky.

I walk down a bit to find a better place to pump water and enjoy a little quiet. I can barely hear the murmur of Bryan’s and Mandy’s voices nearby. Mandy has started saying things like “In a few years, when you come here to visit me…” She’s decided to move here as soon as possible. Apparently this conclusion was reached somewhere between The Pool and Fern Falls, without the need for much discussion with us.

This week feels like a gift, some kind of grace, a few days stolen between the busyness of summer school and Tulsa trips and the beginning of fall classes and chores.

After Odessa Lake, the trail goes up. And then it goes up, and up, and up. These mountains are big in a way we didn’t understand from just looking; it’s something one realizes quite clearly when one has hiked uphill for two days straight. The views from this section of trail, from the big boulder fields we traverse, is stunning. We’re all still cheerful; even Mandy is happily slogging along in her big pack. Today we hike 4.3 miles in 5.5 hours, including the lunch stop, and we’ll sleep tonight at just over 10,000 feet.

Just after arriving at Sourdough camp, a big mule deer comes to visit, and he returns several times during the evening. Bryan and Mandy go after water and I cook supper a distance from camp. Our packets of warm food are tucked inside my vest to cook, and I have time to sit and think: why do we backpack? I say it’s to get away from people, to have places like these all to ourselves, and that’s true. Crowded campgrounds are sad and irritating, too close to too many people. But there’s something else, too, something that isn’t so easy to explain. Backpacking, I think, reduces the day to its essential elements. We walk. We get water. We cook food. We set up shelters. We are a family. And that’s all. Life is so complicated, sometimes; backpacking reduces it to its essentials, if only for a few days.

After supper and a trip to the privy, we all sleep well. We’re up early to hike out, and easy hike downhill to the trailhead.

The story continues…
Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is a multi-part trip report, if you haven’t already you should start with Part 1. Remember too that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

Up before sunrise, we leave the tents and bundle up to drive to Great Sand Dunes National Park. The outlines of the mountains and dunes are visible as we get there, and we walk out into the softly lit sand (and cold wind) to watch the sunrise. The Sangre de Cristo mountains look distant still, in misty dawn light, but the dunes glow warm and pink as morning comes.

Click to see this panorama in a bigger size!

After some time spent taking photographs dunes around us, Mandy and I leave Bryan with his tripod and walk toward the nearest dunes. We reach the top of the first one just as the first rays appear.

Mandy stands at the lip of the next dune, with her camera held up. She looks for all the world like a very short National Geographic photographer, working in some exotic and dangerous foreign assignment. It’s only for a moment, though; she holds her arms up, yells, and plunges down the side of the dune, suddenly a little kid again.

After a stop at the small but excellent visitors center, we fill out postcards and eat breakfast at the restaurant just outside the park. The food’s no good but the decor features a mounted head with an antler protruding from the stuffed thing’s forehead.

We make a quick stop back at San Luis Lakes to pack up camp, and Bryan naps in the car until a stop in Blanca where a detour to the tiny post office leads us past a fence made entirely of cross country skis.

In Pueblo we stop at Chipotle for an excellent lunch, and I nap until Colorado Springs. The drive up the front range is pretty, made even more fun by Mandy’s excited amazement. “It’s so beautiful,” she says. “Wow, look at that one!”

The REI “Flagship Store” in Denver is huge, an old brick warehouse converted into a store, with exposed metal beams and a 45 foot indoor climbing wall. Arriving only an hour before closing time on Sunday afternoon, we practically jog through the store, stopping long enough to snag a few items on our list, including a new harness for Bryan and some purple climbing shoes for me. The store sits near the river, and there’s a little park on the grounds with boulders for kids to climb on, statues of animals, and aspen trees. It’s right on a walking and bike trail, next to Confluence Park‘s water play area. Even on a Sunday evening, the park is crowded with inner tubes and pool noodles and people splashing in the shallow water. The whole area is very busy, not with cars but with people on foot and on bikes.

In Boulder, we drive around until Bryan finds a place in memory: the Pearl Street Mall. It’s a great outdoor shopping area with interesting stores and street performers and the smells of good food. After stuffing ourselves silly on pasta and cheesecake, we walk back to the car and drive to Rocky Mountain National Park.

We arrive late but the Moraine Park Campground people helpfully list the names of the campers arriving after the kiosk is shut down; we quickly find our name and campsite number and set up tents, again, in the glare of the headlights. We’ve driven 1353 miles since leaving home, and we’ll sleep well tonight at over 8,000 feet.

The story continues…
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.

We leave Benton at six and arrive late at Lake Eufala State Park. We get a nice, flat tent site far away from anybody else, and we set up camp in the headlights of the car. The bugs are terrible and it’s very hot; we’d packed sleeping bags expecting chilly temperatures at elevation, and didn’t really think about the night or two we’d spend in the muggy midwestern summer.

We wake up sticky and gross, but since we leave before seven, the campsite’s “free”. We stop in Okemah to see the first exciting roadside attraction of our trip: a row of three water towers helpfully labeled “HOT”, “COLD”, and “HOME OF WOODY GUTHRIE.” The hand dryers in the Valero gas station bathroom are incredibly powerful: we giggle as the skin on our hands and arms flaps loosely. We’re in a place we’ve never been before, and it feels like our trip has started.

Bryan’s been inexplicably excited about seeing the Oklahoma panhandle, so I helpfully drive so that he won’t miss a minute of the tremendous excitingness of, um, not much. We play a game in which we have to find things starting with each letter of the alphabet. It takes nearly an hour and includes two minor arguments and such thrilling items as “C is for Cows” and “N is for Nothing.”

I don’t mind driving on trips, I really don’t, and I try to explain this to Bryan. What I mind is that, when he’s the passenger, he’s bored. He sings. He pokes people. He makes stupid trumpet noises with his mouth. He starts arguments about dumb things just to entertain himself. Today he discovered “licking by proxy,” a technique in which he slobbers on his hand and then tries to wipe it on the driver. This is incredibly irritating and, more importantly, seems tremendously unsafe. I try to get him to drive as much as possible; licking by proxy is much more difficult if Bryan is the driver.

On the advice of a coworker, we eat at a ratty-ass motel diner in Raton, New Mexico called The Oasis Restaurant. The review I read had indicated that the food was good but that the carpet in the rooms was threadbare pink shag. (We chose this eatery over the one with the review that said “Bring a gun.”) We all order from the Mexican side of the menu: Damn. Yum.

About bedtime, we arrive at San Luis Lakes State Park in Colorado at 7,500 feet. We add layers of fleece and down before setting up tents next to the corrugated-metal ramada. It’s the tallest thing here; all the trees and bushes are waist high. We don’t know what it looks like by day, but the nearly-full moon rising over the nearby mountains, over the lake, is beautiful.

The story continues…
Part 1 – Part 2