My friends and I have a bit of an annual ritual… Every summer we all give up many of our daily trappings and retreat to the near wilds of Colorado for a few days of R&R, fly-fishing, steak eating, beer swilling and fire poking!
This year we spent 3 glorious days at the base of the fourteen thousand feet Colorado Collegiate Peaks along the Arkansas River.
As I’ve gained in age, wisdom, and waist size… I’ve migrated away from the more rugged style of camping, sleeping in the tent on the ground in a 1972 psychedelic sleeping bag, to mooching off of a friend of mine, ‘Scooter’- and occupying one of his two double beds in his pop-up trailer- complete with heater! (Yeah I know it’s August, but I’ll have you know that the ambient at 3:30am was indeed registering 38 degrees!) Odd I know coming from a guy who does not wear waders when fly-fishing in 52 degree river water!
And speaking of wading, there was indeed opportunity to do that as well in Colorado’s Arkansas River… Note I specifically did not say fishing! Because even though I had my fly rod in hand, casting any number of feathered bug-avatars into said flowing torrent… I’m convinced there were no fish to be wrangled this year! (My wife and Clay, who both claim to have caught something, beg to differ -- I never witnessed either acquisition so I’m still convinced it was the river and not my angling skills!) The rest of our herd is inclined to agree with me! Lest their angling skills be impugned as well!
But the views more than made up for my shut out!
Alas, the closing day of the long weekend was upon us all too soon, and the campsite required we yuppie nomads to vacate the wilderness… with electric hookups, flush toilets… and coin op showers… no later than 11:00am. We departed at 10:55 for our 2 hour journey back to civilization, all of us proud in the fact that not one of us deposited a single quarter in their Shower Racket!
Besides there is something immensely satisfying to arriving home, unloading the SUV and proceeding to spend 20 minutes in the master bath shower, rinsing off the smoke smell of 200+ store bought pine logs sacrificed to the meditation god known as the “campfire”!
I bid you all a good evening, as I hope to dream of star-filled skies, gentle breezes, and the trickle of a nearby tributary…
Thanks again to Scooter for setting this whole decompress up! You’re a GIANT among men in my book!
Tara,
This camp area was just south of Buena Vista, we usually pick a different spot every year to kinda mix it up a bit and try to see more sites in Colorado.
-JC
Posted by: John Carmichael | August 29, 2011 at 04:47 PM
Wow John, so beautiful out there. Do you go to the same place every year? Is it far?
Posted by: Tara | August 29, 2011 at 04:22 PM
No comment on camping, just letting you know I am alive prior to Irene. We had to cut our vacation short, down the NJ Shore, due to the mandatory evac.
Posted by: Timmy | August 26, 2011 at 03:48 PM