Camping @ Dillon Lake - Sunday Night & Monday

Sunday night was significantly better thanks to Don, the campground manager, (who Mike referred to as The Don), since he used his golf-cart enforced authority to silence the unruly members of the neighborhood. The night was also about 10 degrees warmer (my reading was 44*F) and between my properly patched Thermarest, Kim's new beanie, and our favorable temperatures, our night was much more comfortable. We woke up in the middle of the night to Bridget growling, and we heard some rustling around outside the tent, but I couldn't see anything out of the little plastic windows in our rainfly. I stayed up a bit after Bridget stopped growling, listening for anything else, but I didn't hear anything else.

That brings us to today. We looked for tracks first thing in the morning, but didn't see anything identifiable in the hard dirt. After Kim changed into some good hiking clothes, we left for a bright-and-early hike at about 6 am. There was a trailhead located at the entrance to our campground, and we walked up the road to check it out. It ended up being a pretty good trail, easy bordering on moderate, and we had a good time warming up for the day. We lost the trail toward the top, and decided to take a little off-shoot that looked like it went down the hill. That ended up dead-ending in some rocks, but I went ahead and picked out a precarious but doable path that led us back up to the trail. I called Bridget up, and of course she found an easy little path just to the side that bypassed all the junk I had tiptoed through, and she and Kim passed in 30 seconds what I had taken several minutes to cross. Hmph.

After we got back, we had a quick breakfast and packed everything back into the car, and we got rolling a little bit after 9. The drive was pleasant and went pretty quick, but we counted 17 State Troopers that were waiting for unsuspecting Memorial Day motorists to zoom by them on the steep downgrades. We lucked out and got by without any tickets or warnings, but I'll have to remember that for next time we are coming down I-70, especially on a popular weekend like this one.

Overall, it was a good trip. There wasn't too much traffic considering the reputation of Memorial Day weekend, and Kim and I both felt it would be a worthwhile campground to visit again. However, after the screeching children and yodeling country singers, we are going to be that much happier with the isolation that comes with backpacking.

Camping @ Dillon Lake - Saturday & Sunday

We just returned from our trip to Dillon Lake, between Breckenridge and Silverthorne. We stayed at Prospector Campground, which was a nice national forest campground, a little ways away from town, yet close enough to run into town for a shopping trip or to pick up emergency s'more supplies. It wasn't as remote as our typical trip, but it was a nice way to start off the season.

Our campsite was at an elevation of 9144 ft, according to my altimeter. We were nestled in a small pine grove, with the restrooms just down the way. Kim and I used this trip as an opportunity to break in some of the new backpacking gear we got over the winter season, while across the way her parents took it easy in their camper. For the first time in a long while fires were permitted, so we took full advantage of that both nights we were there. Our campground neighbors kindly invited us over to their site for some freshly cooked cherry cobbler straight from their dutch oven - it's a pretty nifty little utensil that just uses coals above and below to cook something just like your oven at home. The recipe they used is pretty simple and very delicious - 1 box of cake mix, 1 can of pie-filling(fruit of choice), and some butter on the bottom to make sure the whole mix sticks to your arteries, and not the pan. Line the oven with aluminum foil to make it super easy to clean up.

Saturday night was a little bit cold and uncomfortable - the temperature was 33*F at about 6 am Sunday, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was even colder previously in the night. When we got up that morning, we noticed frost on the rainfly of our little Kelty tent, which is a first for us. To make matters worse, my quick-and-easy attempt at repair on my Thermarest failed about 2 hours into the night, so I had no padding and no insulation from the ground. Kim has a bruise on her side from the rock that happened to end up perfectly between our pads. However, we woke up feeling pretty good, and after a little bit of hot cocoa we were ready to go.

After a little bit, Kim and I left with her brother Mike (and our dog Bridget) to find a decent trailhead. We ended up liking the looks of Old Dillon Reservoir Trail, just on the other side of the dam. The drive across the dam was a little unnerving, with water up to your level on one side and a gigantic drop-off on the other. Thankfully, I didn't have a sudden sneeze fit and send us plummeting down onto the townfolk of Dillon.

The trail was easy, with some nice overlooks and a jaunt around some small ponds, but it was quite crowded. We saw everything from toddlers tripping down the trail to a small group of horseback riders. Bridget had never seen a horse before, and when we saw the first one, she decided she definitely wasn't going to mess with these dogs. We probably ended up walking between 1 and 2 miles, so it was a pleasant way to start off the morning.

Afterwards we headed into Breckenridge to see the sights, grab some grub, and procure some supplies for the next night. We enjoyed lunch at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co, and had hearty seafood portions. The town is very picturesque, and we enjoyed taking some shots of the mountain scenery and some of the little shops along Main Street. We found a good beanie for Kim at the Columbia store, with the hopes of keeping her a little warmer that night.

One note about this campsite - the entire camp was terrorized by some children that periodically chased each other around the outhouse screaming like spider monkeys and beating each other with whatever was readily available. Kim used her 2nd grade teacher skills to try to get them to quiet down, but we didn't really get any reprieve unless they were eating, sleeping, or gone. We passed the time plotting their demise in creative ways.
Only slightly less irritating were the campers up the hill who felt compelled to share their country-western with everybody in the county. Mike and I tried to devise a scheme to steal the radio's batteries or slash the power cords, but the cold weather and hot marshmallows kept us docile in our own camp. I also took the day to patch my Thermarest with a kit I got in town, with the hopes that it would be more effective than my duct tape job.