The Sanderson Crew 5: Rocky Mountain Adventure

Day 30: Saturday, June 27th. Time to get our Roadtrip on. Left EARLY with van crammed to the top. Oh we were excited to get on the road but this was our first camping trip with kids outside of the state. How to fit our entire house inside the van? I don't know how Craig does it but he is a Houdini when it comes to packing. Stuff just keeps going in and looks all organized. I just step back and let him handle packing vans. Craig has some friends he graduated high school with who live right on the way to Colorado so they were our pit stop for Day 1 of our vacation. We arrived at his friends house in the middle of Nebraska and they said "you want to go to the lake?" Her parents have a cabin 5 minutes away from their house. After 8 hours in the van we thought it was too good to be true but it wasn't.....

We all took a turn (or two for Craig, Andie and I) tubing and then had some Dairy Queen treats we picked up as a "thanks for letting us stay and create chaos in your house for 17 hours".

Craig loves to do cheesy poses so he got Kory to do this "senior pose". Oh Craig.

Day 31: Sunday, June 28th: Nebraska is great but time to see some Mountains!! 5 hours in the car and we were at the base camp for the next few days. Time to set up shop. But first, I had to take pictures of the kids exploring while Craig un-packed the van and started to get to work. Looking back I realize that he was getting an unfair end of the work load stick.....but check out these pictures of the first moments when the kids realized that this was unlike any camping they had ever done before and the mountains are really REALLY cool. Yes...all of these are in our campsite. We basically had the coolest campsite ever with boulders, trees, views of Longs Peak, etc.

Time to find a stick to fashion a bow and arrow with so we can defend ourselves.....

The first of many deer to venture in our campsite. They were so numerous and pretty soon we were like "oh, there's a deer again" just like a squirrel or rabbit in MN.

The "Warrior Club". They were actually hunting "bears with rabies" in this picture. (side note: I just finished reading them Old Yeller so they have a big thing about animals having rabies right now)

Day 32: Monday, June 29th. After a not so restful night sleep....you know that first night in a tent is never super restful....on top of Craig waking up in the middle of the night thinking that middle school boys were yodeling....I can't make this stuff up. That's what he thought. I think they may have been the Elk Bugeling...even though I don't know if that is in season right now. But that is my thought. More likely than middle school boys yodeling I think.

Anyway. So let me show you why I love camping. Camping is hard I think. You don't sleep great all the time, you have the elements to deal with, there is no air conditioning or heat (we tent it), you have to cook all your meals and plan out how to keep food cool. It seems the coffee is never quite as hot as I would like it or sometimes I would just like a glass of cold milk. But this is why I love camping. This was my view as I was heating up the coffee kettle our first morning.

Yep. That view will keep me coming back every time.

So we decided to take a shuttle to a "little" hike this morning.

Well, we were busy with camp and I read the map wrong so what I THOUGHT was going to be a nice easy 1.5 mile hike (3 mile round trip) was actually a 4.6 mile round trip deal with some elevation. Not my best planning but after the first mile the kids got their mountain legs and did great. We won't talk about the first mile...it wasn't pretty.

But I think the scenery finally won them over.

And we reached a little mountain Lake...Cub Lake. Took a little break. Ate some chocolate, which I believe actually does make everything all better. And then took our time hiking down, stopping by some creeks and boulders to explore a bit.