Camping Mid-September

This camping trip was along the same rutted road as the Dry Creek. I just love that area for camping because we get serenaded by an OWL and anyone who knows me knows I adore owls. The weather this past weekend was not optimal, it rained off and on. We tarped above our main camping area to stay dry but. temps were around 60ish during the warmest part of the day, night time temps around 40ish which was tolerable if you were 'camped out' next to a nice big fire. The altitude at this campsite is about 1800ft, that means it gets a bit cooler. My ears got a bit nippy so I made myself a cute little cap to wear but.... Camping out by the fire means inevitably you have to go to your sleeping bag and freeze....not so.
Recently we picked up a 12'X12' canvas tent complete with wood stove. I must admit, I absolutely love this tent! We were warm, dry, could dress standing up and there was plenty of room for our king size blow up mattress. (Yeah, we were roughing it) I must say the dogs were impressed with the warmth of the tent as well.
I'm looking forward to camping well into October.

I'm such a slacker!

I've done so many cool things since my last post but I never got around to posting them until now.
We have done alot more camping and I have lots of pics to share. In this post I can tell you about something that really depresses me. All of the lovely shots you'll see here will be cut off to the public in the next year or so. It seems that the environmentalists don't think anyone should have places to go camping that aren't 'camp grounds' with tons of other people around and where you have to leash your dog and listen to others party all night long. Yuck, not my idea of a good time. This area WAS due to be bouldered in so no one could ever enjoy it again, over Labor Day. Which I think is pretty sneaky of them. You come back next spring planning on your favorite spot and it's blocked off. As you can see from the picture of the road, this isn't a spot for families in their station wagons, this is definately off-road 4-wheeling and the road looks like that in many spots back to the campsites and the dry creek. Maybe instead of shutting it off they could spend a bit of money on filling in the ruts...LOL.
While we were camping way back on said rutted road, far away from people, with happy dogs who could run free.... we went for a hike and found this Dry River bed. It was really wierd, the air around it was noticeably cooler and it was like you could still feel or hear the water although there was none. Its impossible to explain the feeling you have while you're walking on the smooth river stones. We found so many beautiful rocks that we would never have had access to if it wasn't dry.
I was facinated by the huge chunk of lava rock that was worn smooth, they were all shapes and sizes.

This was a nice easy hike and that particular day we had my sweeties Mother, Sister and nephew with us. It was heavy going as we departed because we had all found rocks that we just couldn't part with.