Camping

Things I like about free camping at Jefferson county open spaces: It’s free, they have free firewood, sometimes the best places are hard to get to, but this time not that hard.

We parked at the second parking lot and started down the trail which was just a tad narrower than my wagon wheels.

(Notice Hannah’s backpack is full of the most important thing to her….Mr. Otter.)

Here you can see Table mountain in Golden.

But after .3 miles it opened up to a road (that the park ranger drives on.) Here was the first thing different than Reynolds park: the park ranger didn’t have a secret ‘way easier than the trail you have to hike’ road.

Sure, it was 1 mile to the campsite and it was uphill most of the way, but it was a gradual climb; not a switchback, climb over boulders, straight uphill climb like last time.

I’d say 1/3 of the hike was downhill and the rest was uphill, but again it was a gradual rise. (Beside that meant that going back it was 2/3rd downhill!)

We made it up to the camp site with our wagon and tent bag and set up camp.

I had to tie down the tent hard in the back because the wind was blowing it over.

Joel started a fire so we could cook our lunch (hot dogs, what else?)

The ranger came up and asked if I had rope to hang my food (yes) because bears had been sighted in the park. He also asked if I put my permit on my car. I realized when we got to the camp that I had both permits on me, so I just placed both of them on the pole for our site. When he asked this I said, ‘Oh, was I supposed to leave one on the car?’ He said yes and then paused (I guess waiting for me to say that I would hike the 2 miles round trip just to put a piece of paper on my car. When I didn’t respond he said, ‘I’ll just put that on your windshield for you.’ Yeah, Mr. Ranger with the truck to drive back, thank you!)

After he left we went and looked at the rest of the place. The water well was open; you had to pump it the old fashioned way (that would be the hard way.)

The kids thought it was cool though. Man, that water was cold! I almost didn’t want to wash up after dinner because I thought it would wake me up! Site 15 had these cool rock outcroppings and look at this view!

Our site was huge, here is the view from the picnic table.

Here is a panorama with our tiny tent in the left corner.

We tried to cook Jiffy-pop but it didn’t like the fire.

Mr. Otter tried to help too but all we got was burned pop-corn.

Bunny helped to split firewood.

I brought along some sand crafts so the girls made bottle necklaces and Joel made a tube necklace.

Hannah didn’t put enough sand in hers so it shook around and turned a kind of purple color.

Right before dinner some friends joined us. They hiked the mile just to eat hot dogs and marshmallows with us and play.

It was a very nice treat. I made an impromptu swing by tossing some rope over a branch and notching a piece of fire wood to fit on the rope, it worked pretty well!

The kids were impressed that I made something they could play on; yeah I have a few creative bones in my body.

I had to repossess the swing after dinner though so we could tie up our food and hang it on the bear pole (a cross bar between two trees away from our tent where we could hang our food so bears wouldn’t be attracted to it. Half the sites had poles and half had bear boxes, I prefer bear boxes.) After our friends left we went behind some rocks and saw this, a kind of lean-to shelter that our friends had noticed.

After cleaning up and getting dressed it was time for bed. We went to bed early, probably 8:30; the last thing Hannah said was ‘I can’t go sleep.’ I think she had too many marshmallows or something because all night she would wake up and act like she was going to throw up, thankfully she didn’t. Here is a pic of the city lights coming on down below.

It was probably in the upper 30’s low 40’s during the night, but no wind to blow us over like in the morning.

We woke up EARLY, about 6am! It was too bright to sleep. We tried to make a fire but it was too windy so we ate our honey buns and donuts and went to wash up. We played some card games and then I started taking down the tent. We made sure to clean our site and throw our trash and then we headed down the hill.

It was mush easier (except for that last .3 miles.) We crept down the hill and then up as we passed the ranger station. We finally made it back to the car and headed home for a nice hot shower.