Rocky Mountain High

Here are highlights from our annual July 4th family camping trip to Snowblind Campground, northwest of Monarch Pass, in Colorado.

Our tent with screened porch, and the car with the trailer it took to carry all of our camping gear.

Over the past 50 years, I've evolved from sleeping on the ground, in a tiny two man tent (our under the stars when it didn't rain), to this spacious two room tent with stand up headroom, sleeping on an air mat on a foldable cot. I have dearly loved it; but these days with a trunk full of oxygen, a generator to run the travel oxygen concentrator, Bernie, my oxygen cart, and Ursula, the shoulder pulse dose oxygen pack (which I can't use in the mountains, because I have to have constant flow oxygen at high altitudes), not to mention arthritic joints that make it exceedingly difficult to get up several times a night from the low cot; I fear that my days of tent camping have come to an end.

See Granny Fran attempt to keep warm at the campfire, while the kids show no sign of freezing.
Since I'm on oxygen I have to keep six feet away from the fire, which gives me a good excuse for not helping with the cooking.

Here are the kids' tents and the fireplace circle.

The aspen grove across the road and next to the privy.

The swimming hole (brrr! Water melting from snowbanks) in the Tomichi Creek running next to our campsite.

Gathered around the fire; Greg grinds limb stubs off Mandy's aspen walking stick with a rough stone; note that Coloradoans do drink their own Coors beer; the tarp over the woodpile and the poncho on the back of Joe's chair indicate the rain that blew over the mountains every afternoon.

Doug, Joe and Greg enjoy the fire.

Jennie demonstrates how to cook breakfast biscuits in a Dutch oven, the way the cowboys did (well, they probably didn't use charcoal briquets.)

Come and get 'em while they're hot! With sausage gravy and fried potatoes they were delicious (no, we don't stick to our diets while camping.)

Mandy and Evan celebrate Independence Day with battery operated fireworks. We love the forest too much to risk burning it.

Wild roses and other native flowers were bloooming all over the area.

A Broadtailed Hummingbird partakes from the feeder we always provide for them.

Mr. Chipmunk is overjoyed to find the raw peanuts that Evan liberally spread around the site.

Evan playing with some of the local Fauna.