Camping at Jack's Gulch--June 14-16

During the weekend of Father's Day, we tried to honor our favorite father around here... and we went CAMPING!

Saturday morning at the campground

Holding her new waterbottle

Setting up breakfast--eggs and sausage

Cory set up the ol' two-person tent: Instant Playhut!

Cory backed 'er in really nicely (as you can see)

The hammock, unoccupied

The fire pit, and the stack of wood (some of which was collected in the woods that morning)

My three favorite campers

Wildflowers everywhere--as far as I can tell this one is a "Western Wallflower"

Checking out our shadows

Love that face!

The beginning of our wandering to our "hike"

I believe this one is the Rocky Mountain Iris

This may or may not be Giant Red Paintbrush

We took a pretty big hike on Saturday. Cory thinks the hike was around 4 miles round trip, but I thought it felt like less. In any case, it was the first hike of this size that we've attempted with the girls and they did okay. Cory carried Ruby on his shoulders a lot, but Scout walked almost every last bit (until the very end, when she clearly was feeling under the weather and the thought of her sister's "ride" was really bugging her as a grand injustice). Catch this video of our reading of the trail markers.

It was a wide road, which made for a nice hike

This is either some variety of Lupine or Penstemon, wish I had had the wildflower book with me on the hike!

I just thought this was a fun silhouette... like a tuning fork

Couldn't tell exactly what kind of footprint this was... but we liked to check it out

Scout found some mica

Here she is with the mica

A sign of the wilderness regulations

So... we think this was "Little Beaver Creek"

Little was an accurate description

The size of the creek sure didn't matter to these guys

They fully enjoyed the creekside funtime

These are wild strawberries

Crossing the itty bitty footbridge

Trying to capture a photo of a butterfly is harder than I thought

Hopping back and forth over the ruts in the road

There was a short time when she DID actually walk... ha ha ha

Hmmmm.... Purple Locoweed, maybe? A type of Larkspur is my other guess. Either way, I guess they are toxic. (You heard it here first!)

 Every camping trip must have a story, right? Well, as it turns out this location (near Pingree Park, up Pingree Park Road off of Highway 14) was very close to the edge of the High Park fire that burned a few thousand acres of forest last summer. Apparently, there is an effort to re-mulch the forest in order to prevent erosion and flooding. We were awoken at 5 am on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. The helicopter mulch-transports lasted all day.

This is the load that the helicopter dropped

Nearing the end of the hike

Hanging out at "the cave" (as the kids like to call it)

Sitting in the "Queen's Chair"

Ruby on the Queen's chair all by herself

Back at the campground, on the morning of Father's Day

The Daddy of Honor!

The very fun toaster contraption that Cory bought

In her Monkey pajamas!

Scout's photo of Mom & Dad

Cory did ALL the dishes! What a guy!

Another photo with Ruby

Hanging out in the Cave

We went to inspect a tree that had overturned

We made a few guesses as to "Why" the tree might have overturned

And we played a few games of Hide and Go Seek before departing

Our trip back to Fort Collins was good--we got to see the Poudre River running quite high. There were quite a few rafting groups and kayakers, and it was a pretty drive back to town.