Colorado Camping Trip — Day 2 (Saturday)

Sam and Ezra rose early and headed to Denver for Ezra’s flight to Pennsylvania. They saw these moose on their way out, and Ezra got out his DSLR to get these shots!

They also got to see this beautiful sunrise!
Our delicious breakfast that morning — coffee, bacon, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs.

Because of Colorado’s many wild fires, there is a ban on camp fires, so that was one key element of camping that we did not get to enjoy. It was most unfortunate, but we made do with a portable gas stove.

The boys found logs for us to sit on temporarily.

Sam was the one in charge of determining what we were doing and where we were going for the day, and also the driver of the truck with all the four-wheelers on it. So we did various things that morning while we waited for him to get back from the airport. The boys decided to construct more stable and suitable benches for us to use at our campsite.

While the boys built benches, we girls enjoyed spending time with the little people in our group — Levi and Kari.

Levi is such a happy boy!
Candace and Levi
Kari found a feather!
Aunt Pearl and her favorite niece! 🙂

Sam was gone most of the morning, so different ones went exploring, played frisbee, or just relaxed a bit.

Beautiful Colorado!

Sam finally returned from Denver after dropping Ezra off at the airport and picking up a few supplies. We ate an early lunch and headed off to find the trail to a lake we had seen from Mt. Lincoln that we wanted to go see.

On our way to find the trail to the lake, we saw the beginnings of a forest fire on a nearby mountain! Sam (who is a volunteer firemen and EMT) called in and reported it.

We pulled off on a side road of the road to the mountain where the fire was occurring, and watched the smoke for a while. We weren’t sure what do – go back to our campsite and pack up (our campsite was on the other side of the mountain that was on fire) or just go on with our plans for the day.

We finally decided to continue on with our plans for the day, and encountered these police and emergency vehicles on our way out. They were allowing to vehicles to leave, but not allowing any vehicles to enter that particular road leading up to the burning mountain.

We finally found the trail to the lake that we had seen from Mt. Lincoln. Tim decided to scout it out a bit, and when he returned, he informed us that it was the most difficult trail he’s ever been on!

The beginning of the trail didn’t seem too bad…
But we quickly came to a very tricky spot, as you can see from this picture!
Some of the boys tried going up this way, but after several attempts we realized that it wouldn’t work.
So we took this round about way, which was still quite difficult as you can see!
We all watched with much trepidation, hoping that we all made it up safely!

As you can see, we had quite a crowd of onlookers who watched with some amusement and lots of trepidation as well! Some even took videos of us! We found out that this particular trail is mostly used for Jeeps or hiking and is not necessarily considered an ATV trail. We encountered a couple hikers on our way that expressed surprise that we had it up!

It was tricky coming down on the other side too!
But we all made it!
At one point there was running water on the trail.
And here we are, nearing our destination….
And here’s the lake — our final destination!

Samuel got out his drone and got these amazing shots!

Carrie, Tasha, Pearl and Candace
This is the trail we came up.
It was pretty cold up there! We saw snow/ice and these beautiful little waterfalls.
If you look really close, you can see a mountain goat!
Some of the group went hiking up some nearby precipice(s) — see the lake in the background.
They found this old car while they were exploring. We were trying to figure out how they got that car all the way up there!!
Going back down the mountain!
Loading the four-wheelers onto the trailer to head back to our campsite.

The fire that we saw on our way appeared to have been put out — thank the Lord! We were grateful to get back to an intact campsite, and eat some grub before we hit the hay after our very eventful and adventurous day.

~Big thanks to Pearl for typing and captioning this post~

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