Our 100-mile vacation (once more, with pictures!)

Friday morning, I chanced upon this blog post about taking a 100 Mile Vacation just hours before we walked out the door for our first 100 mile vacation this summer to State Forest Park in northern Colorado.

I have to tell you, for $44 in camping fees, a tank of gas, and a little creative packing to fit the two kids, the dog, and all of our gear in the Subaru, it was well worth it. Makes me feel even better to think that it might have been a lower-than-average impact vacation due to being almost exactly 100 miles from our home and to us doing some pretty primitive camping (pit toilets, no electricity, one water tap for the whole campground). I won’t try to calculate the water or electricity we saved, and I will admit that, probably due to a lack of bear-proof possibilities, there are no recycling bins in Colorado’s many beautiful State Parks, but man, it sure was a gorgeous weekend.

Some highlights included:

• Seeing a moose! Yes, this is the moose-viewing capital of Colorado, and we ended our morning hike this morning by watching a moose browse a short distance away from the trail.
• Watching literally dozens of hummingbirds at the Visitor Center feeders, and also enjoying one that kept trying to feed off of the red spigot of our solar shower (that we used not for showering on this short trip, but for warm water for dishes, face washes, etc.).
• The beautiful, beautiful mountains and meadows of North Park.
• An outing with the dog that did not involve him destroying anything, pooping in inappropriate places, or otherwise making a nuisance of himself (he was one well-behaved pooch and will likely sleep for a week to recover!)
• Having a camp fire each night and each morning–it was downright chilly, which was a pleasant break from the high 90s we’ve seen down here in Lyons this month.
• Did I mention that the children now think camping is the best thing ever? I guess they take after their parents.

The one thing I will mention is the pine beetle devastation. Boy, I had read about it, but I didn’t realize how pervasive it is up there. The Forest Service estimates that 90% of the lodgepole pines in Colorado will be gone in 3 years. And it seemed like the beetle-kill was approaching that in State Forest Park. I don’t know that anyone will be able to deny the need for better forest management (including allowing the natural fire cycle to resume, people!) once they see mountainsides that are literally covered with the rusty red of dead pine trees. Only a drive through Yellowstone after the massive fires of the ’80s could compare to how shocking this was. I’ll upload pictures tomorrow.