RMNP Pre-plan

This weekend, we are headed out to Rocky Mountain National Park. By my reckoning, everything is perfectly planned.

I phoned the backcountry office several weeks ago to reserve our site for Saturday night. Then I reserved our site for Friday on recreation.gov. We have our topo map, the Saturday night supper is composed. All that remains is to pack up the car (and backpacks) and bolt out to the campground after Mr. Prairie gets home from work on Friday.

Our hiking plan for Saturday looks something like this:

The teeny tiny portion of the park we will be viewing.

Get up super early, pick up our permit from the office at 8, get to the trailhead before 9 am. Hike to the Sky Pond (which, if we are to trust google, may look something like this) eat lunch, retrace our steps a bit (well, quite a bit actually, but only my third choice site is available) set up camp, and enjoy a nice snooze.

Of course, when a plan is very specific, sometimes unexpected situations arise. I'll advise you of any such surprises upon our return.

--- Oct 10 --- editing to add: we were so efficient with this plan that we arrived at our campsite 3 hours ahead of schedule and didn't know what to do with the extra time.

10 Things I Learned in Utah

Double Arch at Arches National Park near Moab

10. A sleeping bag rated to -7 degrees Celsius may not actually keep you warm at that temperature without other precautions.
9. Mainly, the yummiest I.P.A.s are from Colorado.
8. The fine red dust that helps to form the beautiful stone formations throughout the state also exists in campgrounds and will blow into your tent if you give it the opportunity.
7. "Jeep Weekend" is one of the busiest events of the year in Moab. Reservations are advised. (Who knew?)
6. You can fit 5 people, their hiking and day packs, a cooler, a large water jug, a small guitar, a ukelele, and a mandolin into 1 Honda CRV and still drive said vehicle down Hole in the Rock Road.
5. The canyons along Hole in the Rock Road are well worth the trip. We visited Spooky, Peek-a-boo, Zebra, and Tunnel.
4. Spaghetti and tomato sauce is a wonderful change from bean burritos, even when consumed at top-speed at 10 pm.
3. "Harumph Harumph" band names have many possibilities.
2. Time spent with good friends is always valuable. Loved ones not along on an adventure are always missed.
1. I will always be a prairie-girl when it comes to heights, drops, and twirly roads.

Camping at Golden Gate Canyon State Park

Well hello there! For my inaugural post to this blog, I submit this past weekend's trip to Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which is just over 2 hours northwest of Colorado Springs.

The views were breathtaking!

• Best part: Black Bear Hiking Trail
• Worst part: My ludicrous fear of killer mountain lions
• Lesson learned? If you're going to arrive after 6 pm, bring lots of $1 bills
• Rating? 4 stars! (outta 5)

The trip turned out to be a roaring success, after a moderately rocky start. My stuff hasn't arrived yet, so we had to rent a tent that isn't very hiking friendly. Then we discovered that we missed the boat on reserving a site at the two campgrounds in the park. We decided to go for it anyway, stopping a few times (a stove, then beer, then Starbucks at my insistence...)

When we finally arrived at the Park at 6:20 pm, we discovered it was all closed up. We found an envelope for a vehicle permit, but we couldn't find anything to self-register for a campsite! After a little panicking, we found a Park Ranger who was in the midst of some sort of allergic reaction (possible wrong line of work?) but who was nevertheless kind enough to find us the very official clipboard of registration for the backcountry sites.

How was our site? (Deer Creek #19, if you're curious) It was great! Garbage-free, had a flat tent-sized pad and was nestled into a forest.

The best part of the excursion however, was the hiking the next day. On the recommendation of the Park volunteer who we paid our outstanding $3 to, we started with the Black Bear trail and came back down on the horseshoe trail. In theory this was only 4.6 miles (how many km is that? Ah... 7.4) but it was pretty exhausting! We had lunch at the top of the trail, which was the best sandwich in the world, found at this lady's blog. After finishing up with that, we tackled our second hike the Raccoon trail, but it wasn't very challenging and the best views of the mountains were from the trailhead!

All in all, a very nice first weekend in Colorado!