Month: September 2008

With two holes in the tarp,

We snuggled in the dark and enjoyed ourselves…

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,….*

In case you didn’t catch on to what happend, we took a break. Dan and I headed up into the mountains towards our favourite valley, the Upper Huerfano. Original plan was a picnic and rosehip gathering expedition. On second thought, we decided to go camping for the night.

We stuffed gear in the truck, borrowed pots from my dad and headed up into the mountains. It started to sprinkle as we got further into the valley. By the time we got to the Lily Lake trailhead, it was raining very hard. As there were so many new “repairs” on the road with fresh dirt, we decided to camp lower down the mountain. We drove down to the lower campsites and checked out the sites that were available. The first one Dan felt was too much of a flood risk if the river should rise. Reluctantly, I agreed. Another site was across the road and up the hill, and just didn’t look comfy. Too many rocks. The next site had a decent little plateau to put the tent on, and so we set up camp. The river was close, about 15ft from the tent and still running clear. It was also still raining.

We cooked dinner just outside the tent and ate in the tent. After a cup of tea, we did the dishes and then crawled into bed. That is when we discovered the leak in the tarp. Ah well. It wasn’t a big leak, just enough to dampen the bottom of a few bags.

Going off to sleep was a bit difficult as the river was loud, the generator down three campsites was loud and there were some odd sounding noises that kept waking Dan up.

I was the first one up in the morning and found that the river had changed overnight. It was not about 4.5 ft from the tent, flowing much faster and now a frothy chocolate milk colour. Oh my… Walking to the outhouse, I saw that there was flood damage in various places. Worst one being across the road. If we had camped there, we would have been without a road. A good twenty feet of it was underwater and eroding away fast.

I woke Dan up and told him that he was right about the river. He popped out of the tent like a rabbit and looked around. after a bit, we got breakfast going and then looked at all the flood damage.

Last of all, we gathered rosehips. About a pound of them were ripe. Next week we will go up again and see what is ripe.

All in all, it was a lovely 24 hours away from reality.

*apologies to Crosby, Stills & Nash…