Thursday, September 9, 2010

A New Labor Day Tradition?

Ever since we moved to Denver a year ago, we've been talking about going camping.  We both went camping with our families growing up and love being out in nature, but we had yet to go camping together.  The leaves have already started to change up in the mountains, and in just weeks, it will be way too cold at night to camp outside (in my book anyway!), so our time was running out for a camping trip this year.  With the last days of summer looming, we decided that it was time to make it happen, and we headed out to Buena Vista for a Labor Day camping trip.
We spent 2 nights in the San Isabel National Forest and enjoyed these beautiful views of the Chalk Cliffs and surrounding Rockies.
Since we decided a bit spur of the moment to head to the mountains, and over a holiday weekend, the campground only had available sites for Sunday night, so we went a bit, uh, rustic (for me, not my backpacking-loving husband) on Saturday night and tried out dispersed camping.  Dispersed camping = a rock fire ring + no bathrooms and no water, but it was just us and nature, and these beautiful views.
We grilled over the open fire and enjoyed some delicious fajitas for dinner.
The views from our 2nd campsite were even better.  And there were toilets (a "luxury" even though they didn't flush).  I was a happy camper.
The weather was nearly perfect.  We took a short hike to see a waterfall.
We read in the warm sunshine while we listened to the Aspen leaves fluttering in the breeze, talked by the campfire after dark, and ate lots and lots of s'mores.
We played Scrabble in our tent at night by the light of a headlamp.
We had an awesome long weekend and made lots of fun memories on our first camping trip together.  We both love being out in nature and the slower pace that comes with camping.  Our time was refreshing and relaxing.  It felt like we were gone for longer than 2 nights and it was a peaceful, fun little getaway.
As we got in our car to head home, we decided this just might be the new Lo family Labor Day tradition.

5 comments:

outdoor.mom said...

looks like a romantic trip :-)

Christy said...

This looks like so much fun and what a great tradition to begin! So glad that you were able to get away for the weekend and enjoy relaxing and taking in the GORGEOUS scenery. I am so jealous about that by the way :)

And those fajitas and s'mores... yum!!!

Have a great day, Amber!

Shanda said...

Fajitas sound like great camp fire food...I hadn't thought of that one.

I'm a newbie camper. This was my 2nd summer to go. I had never slept outside before I met Joel!

Ronald Nordman said...

Looks beautiful! We are planning a camping trip to the same area this summer. Do you remember the name of the campground?

Amber said...

Hi Franklin, I couldn't find an e-mail address on your blog or leave a comment on any of your posts so I thought I'd answer you here. We stayed at the Cascade Campground in the Pike & San Isabel National Forest. You can reserve the site through the reacreation.gov website. We stayed in site 17 and it was a great site! Hope you have a wonderful camping trip!