Camping in the Cold

During the second weekend of September, Nikki, Steve, Eva, and I all piled into Steve's over-packed car and drove two-and-a-half hours south of Denver to Spruce Grove Campground, which is at a higher altitude than Denver, as it's in the Rocky Mountains, near Pike's Peak. It was a tiring but pretty drive, with some of the aspen leaves already transitioning into their autumn yellow, but it would've been A MILLION times better if Eva hadn't whined and whimpered THE ENTIRE WAY DOWN. Seriously. I thought Nikki was gonna leap into the back of the car and strangle the dog!! I don't know when Eva developed a dislike of riding in cars, but she was quiet for only maybe fifteen minutes the whole time.

A rare quiet moment. Note the crazy eyes.

When we finally arrived to the campsite, we discovered that, while it was idyllic, it was also a walk-in site, which meant we had to park the car and carry all our stuff over a bridge to the site.

View from a little hiding spot behind the campsite
that Nikki had to go to because she was having an anxiety attack
and needed quiet.

After the tiring trip, we decided that before setting up the tent, we were gonna chill on the nearby riverbed with Mandy and Camden and Mandy's friends Allison and Andrew. Allison brought her dogs Gonzo and Trixie, so there were several pups all running around and vying for our attention.

Relaxin'...like I do.

Trixie is the black dog, and Gonzo is the little one.

The gang. Andrew is in the chair in the background,
and Allison is in the blue jacket.

Eva, acting crazy as usual

A little later, Nikki and I decided to hike up the mountain (for lack of a better term) and climb on top of this giant rock formation right next to our campsite. The climb was steep, but Nikki said that the climb to Hanging Lake (check out her pictures starting with this one) was waaaaaaay worse and longer. Now, I'm not really scared of heights, but standing on top of a giant rock that towered above the whole valley was kinda making me nervous. As such, I made Nikki not take any pictures of me; I didn't want my fans to see me freaking out. :p

View to the right of where we stood on the giant rock.
We couldn't find a way to get to the lake from the campground.

View from the backish part of where we stood.
The space inside the red box is our campsite!

View to the left of where we stood. This is the rest of the campground.
I think Pike's Peak is one of those mountains, but I don't know.

For a while, Nikki laid down on the rock and just looked at the sky and listened to the Christian youth group down below perform slam poetry about Jesus and finding their future wives. (I'm not joking. We couldn't hear all of it, but it was hilariously awesome and very earnest.) Nikki wanted to take some "selfies" (formerly called "MySpace photos," but that site barely exists anymore, so someone made up this new name, which is a shortened version of "self-portraits"), but it's REALLY hard to do with a fancy camera like her Nikon D3000. These are the best out of the ten or so she took:

Steve's favorite. He thought it was hilarious.

Nikki's favorite. At least you can see the mountains in the background.

Obviously, Nikki's arms are too short to do a selfie properly, and she won't let me touch her camera, since I have the tendency to break her things by accident. :p

Eventually we climbed down and joined everyone else. Cam and Steve had gone snake-hunting in the river, and Camden actually found a snake!! Nikki didn't get a picture of it, unfortunately, but Andrew did. If he ever sends the pictures to Mandy, I'll add them here. It was a garter snake and kinda big too. The other kids playing in the water were SUPER excited, and Cam was proud to show Steve that he had found a snake.

On the hunt with his trusty net

The rest of the night went pretty typically. We set up a campfire, cooked hamburgers (except for Andrew, who keeps kosher, so he brought some "boil in a bag" Indian food), and Nikki read a zombie story that she had started during the last camping trip. Camden LOVES ghost stories but gets scared easily since, you know, he's 6 years old. Mandy likes listening to Nikki tell the stories because Nikki does voices for every character. We stayed up chatting then went to bed.

Like the first time we went camping with Eva at West Chicago Creek,she and Steve took up most of the room on the air mattress. Only this time, THEY STOLE ALL THE COVERS TOO!! We had our usual set-up of two flannel sleeping bags, the comforter, and two extra blankets, and Nikki and I got a sliver of one of the sleeping bags and that's it. I woke up at one point and noticed that Eva was actually under the blanket Nikki had been using!!

Somehow, we survived the night and spent the morning packing up the campsite. (Well, Nikki and Steve cleaned up the campsite. I don't do manual labor.) Eva was shivering, as it was still about 40* outside, so Nikki tied her hoodie around Eva, as no one could find Eva's dog sweater before we left to go camping. Eva would've appreciated it, I'm sure, were she not super uncomfortable in it. Camden, however, kept Eva calm by petting her and talking quietly to her.

The Dog Whisperer

Nikki offered to drive home, since Steve had driven all the way down. Eva still whined, but much less than she had on the way to the campsite. We stopped at a Safeway in a small town to pick up some breakfast food. Nikki got a burrito for herself and a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich for Eva. After having such a heavy meal, Eva DEFINITELY calmed down.

While we were driving back, Nikki pulled over to take a picture of a sign she had seen the day before. It was a "point of interest," as the sign said, but the part that stood out to Nikki was a bunch of white rocks that spelled out a giant "YOLO." YOLO stands for "You Only Live Once," and according to Nikki, it's only used by "idiots on the internet and teenagers." [Nikki Note: The link takes you to UrbanDictionary.com, which is a great resource for finding out the meaning of slang words, but is user-generated, so it contains adult language.]

Dang kids. Pretty good prank though, if you ask me.

This is the real reason why this location is a point of interest: it's a historical site that used to house Native Americans of the Ute tribe. Of course, it's kinda lame to look out at a place with fields and a pile of used tires and a small gold mine and think "Native Americans used to live here until settlers moved in and kicked them out." I'm not gonna get into it, but I'll just say that I think the Utes got a raw deal.

It's hard to read the text on the board, so I recommend
going to the website I linked above.

This point of interest was located just outside of Florissant, Colorado, which is a small town that's claim to fame is the Fossil Beds National Park, where people found a TON of fossils in this lake bed. (We didn't get to stop here.)

(More info on the Ute Indians too)

The other big deal about Florissant is that they're a part of the Gold Belt Byway, which we *also* didn't get to see. [Nikki Note: We had a psycho dog in the car. I wanted to get home as quickly as possible.]

 

 

You can *almost* see the little gold mine that was there to the back right
of where I'm sitting.

So that was our trip. Not super exciting, but at least it was really pretty and we got to go camping before it REALLY gets cold out! Nikki has also sworn that Eva will NEVER go camping with us EVER again, as it's too stressful for everyone involved. Maybe next time we go camping, then, I'll actually get some blankets!

West Chicago Creek Campground, or Pup in the Wild

[Nikki note: I've added some artistic photos from this trip to the Facebook Fan Page. Check them out!]

You may remember from the filler blog post I made a week or so ago that Nikki, Steve, Eva, and I joined some friends for a camping trip in the mountains. On the suggestion of our friend Mandy, we joined her and two friends, Beth and Dave, at the West Chicago Creek Campgrounds, near Idaho Springs. We arrived on Saturday, and after noshing and chatting a bit, Steve set up our tent.

He also blew up the queen-sized air mattress with nothing but his enormous lungs and determination.

I, however, didn't help set up the tent. Journalistic armadillos such as myself are not meant for manual labor.

Chillin' like a villain in my balla shades [Nikki note: These are actually MY sunglasses; Claire recently broke them. She's no longer allowed to borrow my things.]

Eva, meanwhile, took some time to get used to her new surroundings, mainly by sniffing things, whimpering, getting her leash caught on tree branches and rocks, and rolling around in the dirt.

We decided to spend some time taking a hike and checking out the woods around the campsite. The trails weren't always easy to go through, as there had been a big storm a few days before, so a lot of trees had fallen down or lost their branches. Some of the cabins in the area had lost power because of downed lines! I didn't have to worry about any of that though, as I rode in style (as usual).

Eva enjoyed the hike, although since Steve is trying to teach her not to pull on the leash, it was slow going, since they had to stop every few minutes so Steve could tell her "no pulling." (She's starting obedience classes soon.)

This is the view we happened upon during our hike. How gorgeous, even for a spot that's mostly rocks!

Nikki took this picture for her mom, who has decorated her bathroom with pictures of outhouses.

When we got back to the campsite, everyone started getting things ready for dinner. Eva, however, started doing something strange. She started pushing dirt into her food dish with her nose. We couldn't figure out WHY she was doing this; why would a dog want to eat dirty food? Steve looked it up later and read that dogs bury their food for later when they're in the wild. Instinct is a strong habit to break. Then Eva started digging a hole near the chair where Nikki was sitting. We weren't sure why she was doing that either.

Dogs are so weird.

It turns out, she was digging a hole to lay down in, I guess because the sleeping bag/blanket Mandy donated to Eva wasn't good enough. Again...dogs are weird. She's SUPER CUTE though, so that kinda makes up for her weirdness.

If you don't instinctively saw "Awwww!" then you're a monster.

We had hotdogs and cheeseburgers on the menu, as they're the easiest food to cook over an open fire. (This was before a complete fire ban was put into effect due to the high number of wildfires in Colorado this year.) While Dave cooked me a hotdog, I waited patiently, safely away from the fire, as I'm highly flammable.

Eva also wanted a hotdog, specifically Dave's hotdog, but Dave was NOT in a sharing mood (valid).

"Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but GIVE ME YOUR HOTDOG."

Before we had gotten to the campsite, someone in the group had the "brilliant" idea to soak berries in cheap vodka so they could get drunk off of fruit. Now, I'm usually in favor of booze-soaked fruit, especially if that fruit is in a giant pitcher of sangria, but vodka and I aren't friends. 

Bask in its booze-soaked glory.

Steve, on the other hand, is a big fan of vodka in its many forms, so he was more eager than I to try the experiment. Mandy was hesitant at first, and her fears were justified. Both she and Nikki ended up spitting the fruit out into the grass, as the vodka had soaked so deeply into the cells of the strawberries and bananas that their DNA was probably permanently changed.

As people picked through the fruit (or avoided it entirely), we played Cards Against Humanity, a card game like Apples to Apples, but for people with really twisted senses of humor. Dave was incredibly good at the game; Nikki was not. [Nikki Note: I'm terribly funny, but I guess others just don't get my sophisticated "humour."] As day turned to night, we built up the fire and put a sweater on Eva so she wouldn't get cold. (She has short hair and is still really skinny.)

Seriously! How can you look at this dog and NOT fall in love?!

We turned in around ten or eleven, I think, all the while listening to the church youth group/volleyball team play acoustic guitar and play flashlight tag or something until the wee hours of the morning. Nikki wanted to yell at them from the tent, but Steve said that'd be too rude. I had set up the sleeping bag Mandy had donated for Eva on the side of the air mattress, but she was having none of that. She curled up horizontally on the mattress, right between Nikki and Steve. Nikki and I got VERY little sleep that night because we kept almost falling off the mattress! Here, I drew a picture for y'all about how we looked sleeping.

Note Nikki's angry face in this diagram. Also, it's color-coded! :D

The next morning, Nikki made all of us pancakes and bacon. (Beth didn't eat bacon because she's allergic.) They were SO tasty. She also went to drink a bottle of water and found it woefully full of cheap, berry-flavored vodka. Nothing wakes you up like surprise liquor!

After we finished packing up camp, I made all of us sit for a group picture. Nikki's tripod was missing the piece that connects the camera to the top of the tripod, so she and Beth took turns being the photographer.

Left to Right - Top Row: Dave, Eva (sorta), Steve; Bottom Row: Mandy, me, Beth

Us again, minus Beth, plus Nikki, and now you can actually see Eva better.

We had a fantastic drive, and Eva really enjoyed bumping along down the windy dirt road from the campsite back to the highway. Even though there's a lot of wildfires this year due to droughts and a really dry winter, there are still a lot of safe places to camp, so we'll (hopefully!) go on more adventures as the summer progresses.

In Which We Go Camping, Avoid Bears, and I *DON'T* Get to Ride a Horse!

So remember long ago when I said that we went camping for one day in the Rockies? Well, Nikki FINALLY finished editing the photos for me, so now I can finally make a post about that weekend! Honestly, she can only use the "but I work all day and have grad school homework and I'm trying to get a social life here" excuse so many times before I just stop hearing her talk anymore. :P

Steve, Nikki, and I left Labor Day Weekend Friday to make the drive up to Glacier Basin Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park. It's a high-altitude park, and there have been BEAR SIGHTINGS there recently, so I was terrified. Nikki tried to pretend that she was cool with the whole "we might run into a bear...literally" thing, but she soon showed her true colors. (More on that later.)

Our drive to the Rockies took us through Estes Park, Colorado, a small town up in the mountains that's full of little restaurants and cafes and clothing stores and skiing places and TOURISTS. We stopped at a sports bar for dinner and ate outside on the patio, which overlooked a river.

 I love this picture of me! I think I'm going to make it my new profile picture. Everyone keeps mistaking me for the cat because of the one I have now of the two of us. :P

Nikki abandoned me on this tiny rock in the middle of the rushing rapids of this river! (Luckily, armadillos are EXCELLENT swimmers!)

Thanks to a poor bit of navigation on Nikki's part, we didn't get to the campground until after dark. When we pulled up to the ranger station to check in, Nikki was freaking out about the "bear situation." She had a pamphlet we had gotten at the FIRST campground we drove to and was reading about how to avoid bear attacks. When the old ranger lady started grilling Nikki and Steve about camping in "Bear Country," Nikki blurted out, "THERE AREN'T ANY BEARS IN OUR TRUNK" which confused the hell out of the ranger and Steve but just had me cracking up! Turns out, Nikki had been reading about how you have to put all your food in the trunk of your car because bears have figured out how to bust open windows. You're also not supposed to wear to bed the same clothes you cooked in because bears can smell the food on your clothes and then burst into your tent and try to eat you!!

Follow the link for some other tips on how Not to Get Eaten by Bears While Camping.

Steve and Nikki set up the tent while I took first shift on Bear Watch. Really, Nikki had nothing to be worried about; our part of the campground was a wide open space surrounded by other campers in tents and, on the periphery, campers in RVs. There were some trees/woods, yeah, but nothing thick enough for a bear to hide in. Frankly, I was a little disappointed.

Finally, after a lot of bickering and "Why are you mad at me, I don't know how to set up a damn tent"s, our home for the night was finished! Here, let me give you the tour...

This is the outside of the tent. I know it looks small, but Steve can almost stand upright in it (if he's standing in the middle), and he's a little over 6' tall. So really, it's perfect for me and Nikki.

And this is me, inside the tent. I'm on the air mattress that Nikki and Steve brought with them because they're pansies who don't want to sleep on the cold hard ground. ;)

And this is me INSIDE the tent. See how little I am in there?

Nikki's set-up for the bed was pretty ingenious. Because an air mattress traps all the cold air and makes you FREEZE when you sleep on it, Nikki had one of the sleeping bags cover the mattress, with the flannel part facing up. Then she had a sheet on top of the sleeping bag, and then ANOTHER sleeping bag on top of the sheet, this time with the flannel facing down. To bring the overkill full circle, Nikki put their comforter on top of everything. I thought she was being a little melodramatic. I mean, it wasn't THAT COLD yet...

As the night went on, I became more and more thankful that Steve knows how to build a campfire. It was cold as all get-out up there in the Rockies!! I mean, down in Denver, it had been in the 80s all week; nice, warm, armadillo weather. But in the mountains at night, that's a whole other story. Nikki bundled into her giant Loyola hoodie and kept walking around shivering and muttering to herself dramatically. But even Steve started getting really cold! He put on long pants and stood ridiculously close to the fire. He didn't even want to snuggle, for fear of giving up his warmth, I guess. I finally just said, "Let's call it a night," and we all huddled under Nikki's brilliant layers of blankets and warmth. She snuggled me HARD that night, curled tightly into a ball like an armadillo.

The next morning, the sun was shining brightly, and the sky was blueblueBLUE! It was still really chilly though, so Nikki stayed in her hoodie...and *I* stayed under the covers! At least until Nikki made me come outside to keep her company while she and Steve made breakfast.

Our campsite at Glacier Basin Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park. Check out the perennially snow-covered mountains!

Look at this tiny tree! I am a giantess next to it! This stately evergreen could easily become my breakfast! Muahahahaha!

Speaking of breakfast...

TURKEY BACON!! Not as good as pig bacon, but significantly better for you. We also had cereal, and Steve had scrambled eggs. 

...That frying pan is STILL burned to a crisp on the bottom, and it's been washed TWICE! Nikki says it's not a big deal since it was a hand-me-down, and it still works fine.

After breakfast, we packed up and got ready to go to the next spot. We had quite a bit of time before we could check in at the next campground, about an hour or so away, so Nikki suggested we all go horseback riding through the Rockies while we waited.

I.

WAS.

SO.

EXCITED!!

I've only ever seen pictures of horses or seen them from a distance when we were driving through The Nothingness of the Mid-West, and now I was going to have a chance to RIDE ONE?!?!

....OR SO I THOUGHT!!! >:(

When we got to the stables, the grizzle old cowJERKS kept calling me a "teddy bear" and said that Nikki couldn't bring me on a horse, not even just for a PICTURE!!!! I kept yelling at them that I was an ARMADILLO, and NOT a "teddy bear" (UGH), but they wouldn't have any of it. The cowJERKS made Nikki return me to the car while she and Steve rode horses for two long, boring hours. (Boring for me, anyway.) So it's up to her to tell you about her *greeeeeaaaat* adventure riding a stupid horse in the Rockies. She's telling me it's time to go to bed now though, so I guess she'll write about it later.

Good-night, peeps!!

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I'M SO EXCITED!!!!

So Nikki and Steve told me that we're going to celebrate Labor Day weekend BY GOING CAMPING IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS!! :D OMG! I've never been camping before, so I'm crazy excited. The two places sound really awesome too.


We're spending Friday night to Saturday day at Glacier Basin Campground, which is 8500 ft above sea level. AND THERE COULD BE BEARS NEARBY!! I'm both scared and thrilled! We could go horseback riding, and there will be a campfire and maybe s'mores! And I guess Steve and Nikki will go hiking or something.

Then from Saturday to Sunday, we're going to stay in Eleven Mile campground. We could go canoeing! And Steve will want to fish, but Nikki won't because she's scared of fish for some reason. :p I don't know if there are any bears there though, so maybe it won't be as exciting.

Then Monday, Nikki and Steve were talking about going to the Taste of Colorado festival in downtown Denver. The food list looks AWESOME, and I'm super stoked that armadillo isn't on the menu! I don't know if they'll let me go with them. We'll have to see.

This is probably going to be the best weekend of my short armadillo life.