Happy Campers

We've been itching for a while now to get out on a little camping adventure.  Last summer wasn't much of a camping summer with a brand new Callie in our family.  But this year, we were ready!  Finally the stars aligned and we set out on our first family campout.  Our destination was Crested Butte, a place we've been wanting to visit since we moved to Colorado and made even more enticing (at least to Kim) after we learned that it boasts itself as the "wildflower capital of Colorado".  The flowers were, indeed, lovely, though perhaps we were a bit on the early side for the full show.  Nevertheless, we enjoyed our time in the mountains immensely - the peaks and the rivers and the trees and the clouds were too fabulous for words.  (Good thing we took pictures!)  We kept our agenda very low-key for this trip: lots of time spent sitting/reading/crawling in the sunshine, much gazing at the cloud shadows moving across the mountains, a little hike to the end of the road and back, and an afternoon outing to Mt. Crested Butte to take a gander at the ski resort.  A most perfect way to spend a weekend!

We found a most excellent camping spot along Slate River Road.

Check out our sweet new tent!  We were very pleased
 with this bad boy.

A good little post-picnic-lunch crawling on the blanket.

Fun in the sun.

More crawling.

She got brave and began venturing off the blanket.

Happy (and dirty) campers.

Yep, super happy.
(Also, I love how she's posing in this pic - it's a common little
occurrence these days and it makes me grin every time.) 

Good morning, Mountain!

Good morning, cuties!

Morning light creeping down the mountains.

Breakfast time!

Cal seems to have developed her mom's love
of muffins.  These ones were especially tasty.
Recipe can be found here.

Crawling . . . 

crawling . . . 

I named this peak Volcano Peak because it reminded me of
those sand volcanoes we used to make in the backyard sandbox,
complete with a little baking soda and vinegar "lava" action.

The Slate River, right at the edge of our campsite.

Sigh.  Heaven.

Larkspur

???
(But it's quite pretty.)

Again, I'm not sure what this is, but it's cheery and yellow.

So, apparently I need to get better at my plant ID-ing because
I have no idea what this one is either.

This was the end of the road and the end of our hike.

View from up on top.

The best clouds.

Dozens of these streams created by the melting
snow up high cut their way down the mountains and
drained into the Slate River below.

Snow-covered Slate at ~9550' elevation.

Pit stop on the drive back home - on top of Monarch Pass
at the Continental Divide.

It was pretty chilly at 11,312 feet even in the middle of the day.

We didn't ride it.

But we got a kick out of the colorful cars.