Sometimes with all the hikes, bike rides and adventures we have on our camping vacations, I overlook that one of the very best parts of camping is just being there.

Sharing coffee and hot chocolate on a cold mountain morning.

Sitting around in our chairs telling stories.

Laughing at Grandpapa’s jokes.

Watching Taido fix bikes.

Doing camp dishes in bright tubs.

Reading a book. Playing cards or Settlers of Catan.

Letting the cool breeze from the river blow on my face.

Wondering at how the kids still have energy to play after hiking all day.

Throwing rocks.

Building forts and dams with rocks and sticks.

Noticing how the clouds change as the day goes by.

Makes me wishful for a little fall camping weekend sometime soon!

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While we were in Colorado in July, Taido took tons of pictures of the sky from the same spot in our campsite in Crested Butte.

I am thankful that he and my dad are always keeping an eye on the changing skies when we’re camping and hiking.

Being caught in storms while hiking has bestowed in me a healthy reverence for the unpredictable weather.

I really prefer to listen to the rain from the inside of the camper or watch the hail fall from underneath our magic tarp, but the weather changes very quickly in the mountains so we don’t always find ourselves at camp when it storms.

One afternoon this year we were hanging around in camp after a morning hike and a hailstorm quickly moved in. Since we weren’t rushing down a trail, we had the luxury of watching in awe as the sky turned ominous.

We huddled together and listened to the plink, plink, plink of the hail on the camper.

For just a few minutes the landscape was covered in these dreamy little white balls of ice.

Strangely beautiful.

It was gone in an hour, and the ground was dusty again by bedtime in the dry Colorado air.

If we hadn’t taken pictures, I might have thought we had dreamed it.

I was reminded of this crazy storm this morning in church during a reading of Psalm 147.

He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
Who can withstand his icy blast?
He sends his word and melts them;
he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

Psalm 147: 17-18

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We took a morning to hike and bike the Snodgrass Trail in Crested Butte, Colorado on our summer vacation.  Taido has wanted us to do this trail for a while, but it’s a fairly strenuous single track trail for our young mountain bikers, so we’ve put it off in the past.

This year we decided we could do it!

I only have one picture of the bikers because they took off ahead of the hikers as soon as this picture was taken.

We hikers were a little slower, but we also had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, which was amazing!

The trail starts just past Mt Crested Butte and comes out on Washington Gulch Road.  It skirts around Snodgrass Mountain and is about three miles long, but it is definitely a strenuous three miles.  Lots of up and down in elevation.

The highlight of the trail is that it climbs in and out of the most beautiful aspen groves.  The thickness of those trees made it feel to me like a forest wonderland.

In between groves, the trail would dip down and then climb again.

Simon was so excited that a deer crossed through the grass and took the trail before us.

Simon enjoyed being the only child on the trail with us, because we let him set the pace and find all the markings.  Plus he got to carry his own little Camelbak filled with water, that also had a pocket full of treats.

The hike was really long for my mama, who was asleep by about 7:30pm later on this day, but I’m so grateful that she was able to come to Colorado and hike with us  after a year fighting some major health battles.  It was good to wander in the woods with her and Daddy again.

It was a long hike for Simon too!  He did so great, but he needed a little help after he almost got run over by a mountain biker.  Yikes!

This was one of my favorite days we spent in Crested Butte this year.  We went back to camp and had a late lunch of brats and cheese.  Then we kicked back in our camp chairs for the rest of the day. I love camp life!

Trail Notes:

If you go, you will want a hearty mountain biker like Taido in your group who can bike the road back up to the van to come and pick up the hikers.  Or you might want to plant a car at the bottom of the trailhead on Washington Gulch Road.  Also this trail is closed for parts of the summer for cattle grazing, so check with the visitor center in downtown Crested Butte if you want to be sure it’s open!

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Oh Be Joyful.

That’s the name of the valley we camped in near Crested Butte, Colorado.

We’ve camped here several times before, so it was all shouts of joy in the van when we decided to return there for the last leg of our summer vacation.

My parents met us there and the kids were very happy to see them.

Even though we live in the same town, it is a special treat to go on vacation and have a little uninterrupted time with the grandparents.

We also met up with our friend Jermaine, who we’ve known since we lived in Seattle.  She’s in the US for the summer visiting from her current home in Central Asia.  It was so fun that it worked out for her to jump in with us on our camping trip because we all camped together in the Pacific Northwest many moons ago.

The mountains are such a great setting for catching up.

You can visit while you hike.

And there is plenty of time for storytelling back at camp.

For a good part of the day we could just sit and watch the cows meander through our campground on their way to greener pastures.

They were joyful too.

We hiked the Oh Be Joyful trail right from our campground on our first day there.

There were fewer wildflowers than last year because of the dry weather, but it was still so beautiful.

The bikes were put to the test on the mountain trails in Colorado this year.

Taido fixed MANY flat tires.

Ben and Mary Polly took Jermaine on their favorite ride.

Our kids love to ride into the town of Crested Butte.  It’s about 3 miles from the campground.

The reward for the ride is often a trip to a Chino family favorite, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

It was time to say goodbye to Jermaine after just a couple days in Colorado, so we sent her off on the next leg of her journey to see friends and family.

We had such a fun visit.  New memories made together.  Until our paths cross again.  Maybe next time in her part of the world??

If you go, a few details:

Oh Be Joyful Campground is about 3 miles down Slate River Road (which you turn left on just after you go through downtown Crested Butte, CO).  The best part about this campground is that it is FREE to camp there.  That’s right, free. Maximum stay is 14 days.  And if you find that the campground is full, you can find overflow spots on up Slate River Road (such as the field where we camped last year), but then you don’t have a bathroom nearby.

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So as I’ve been going through pictures, I realized I never put up all the pictures from our trip to Colorado last summer.  I even had the ones for the blog all picked out and in a folder.

I know what happened.

Every year, when our time is up in the Rockies, I drive home while Taido stays in Colorado for more adventures.  Our kids all start school just a couple of days after we get back.  We miss open house.  We throw together some school supplies and last year’s uniforms.  The kids go back to school.  We’re all exhausted, trying to get into a new routine and missing our dad/husband.  I console myself with a couple of posts about the lovely time we’ve just spent together camping which now feels like a million years ago before I crash.

I’ve been staving off that crash all week.  With ice cream and popsicles.

The combination of heat and exhaustion is not good for me.

Praise the Lord we’ve almost made it through the first week of school though!

Here are last year’s Colorado pictures.  Maybe next week I’ll get around to this year’s!

Two Weeks in Colorful Colorado in 2011

After a quick stop in Santa Fe, we set up camp in the valley just beyond Oh Be Joyful Campground, a favorite spot near Crested Butte.

We found the most beautiful empty field to spread out in and enjoy.

The views all around us were so lovely that we spent a good bit of our days just hanging in camp and enjoying them.

A few days into the week, our family and friends arrived to camp with us.

We did a favorite hike to Judd Falls.

We were all so grateful for Tony being around to encourage the hikers with shorter legs!

And our pal Bailey who has loved on our kiddos for many years now was rarely without a kid by her side.

I love these pictures of camp clean up and of hanging around in camp.  I find that usually I just take pictures of the tops of hikes or the mountains, but these pictures capture part of why I love camping so much.  There is a simplicity to the days during camping that makes me never want to come home.

Doing the dishes and playing games in camp chairs.  Everything takes longer, and most things have to be done together.

I love that my kids will have these memories of doing these things together.  Especially now as they get older and want to do everything on their own.

These guys played so hard all week long.  They dug in the dirt and stuck things in the fire.  They created all sorts of imaginary worlds.  Simon missed these guys terribly this year!

Peter and Whitney headed home a little earlier than us so we drove to a different campground near Creede, Colorado on the Rio Grande.

We stopped and saw these gorgeous falls on the way.

And we attempted to climb San Luis.  We made it pretty far before Taido turned us around because of approaching clouds.

Here is everyone standing on the Continental Divide, which is pretty much the top of the world to me.  MP is standing on both sides of the continent!

The hike was so beautiful.  And we even found some snow to touch.

We did hit some bad weather on the way down, so we were grateful to be below tree line.

We made it back safely to the van for lunch, and then we had ice cream in Creede.

We also hit the Sand Dunes and Whitewater Rafting last year.

Except for that exhausting drive at the end, I really do treasure each moment of these trips.

Note: Whitney took lots of amazing pictures last year on this trip too!  She did our family photos and Bailey’s senior photos while we were there.  And, her family stopped on the way home in Denver and had their pictures done as well!

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Crested Butte, Colorado.

We headed out this morning for our first real hike of the week.  Judd Falls.  We drove through the tiny settlement of Gothic, Colorado.  Students of all ages were out in the fields studying, courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.  This collection of cabins has got to be one of the coolest places on earth to spend a summer.

We came through this same spot six years ago with my family.  That was back when there were only six grandkids (3 more have since been added to the mix).  We had a wild and crazy time camping at Emerald Lake several miles above Gothic.

I think that was the summer I fell in love with summer in Crested Butte and the joy that is a pack of children playing in fields full of Colorado wildflowers, fishing in streams and imagining endless uses for rocks and sticks of all shapes and sizes.

We reached our trailhead soon after passing Gothic.  We hiked through Aspen groves and past little streams to get to Judd Falls.

Simon is on his own feet these days and finally out of the pack, which brings its own challenges, but I loved watching him discover the rocky trail on his own.  He found several stick and rock treasures, spotted four chipmunks and was overjoyed to reach the falls at the end.  His enthusiasm is contagious, and while most of us are in constant awe at the surroundings no matter how many times we’ve been to Colorado, there are a couple among us who need his eyes to show them the way to pure joy.

After reaching the falls, we came back for lunch to our home for the week, a condo that has been graced to us by dear friends.  I fixed soup, gloriously happy that it’s cool enough outside to enjoy soup.  Then four of us headed into town on rented bikes while Simon napped with Taido.

The bike trail between Mt Crested Butte and Crested Butte is a highlight of this area.  We hit up a charming spot for ice cream and into Blue Moon Books to read and rest on the cushy chairs.  Then Simon and Taido met us at the town park, but not before Simon got some ice cream.  Because he is not about to be left out of ice cream.

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