Livin' the Rocky Mountain High Life

Back again after a lovely, relaxing 4-day weekend up in the mountains.  Some friends have just purchased a piece of property out in the boonies and we were invited to come camp on it with them.  It took us about 5 seconds to decide.  Their little corner is beyond gorgeous.  We arrived just after dark on Friday night, and were a tiny bit shocked when their camper turned off the road and into the trees...

But we followed along, just the same.  At the bottom of the hill, and through a whole lotta trees, we found a meadow across from a stream where we parked and set up camp for the night (we sleep in the back of the truck so there wasn't much setting up to do).  After a speedy dinner, we all knocked off for the night. 

In the morning, we woke up to frost on the ice chest (Yay for Fall!!), and this view ... with these amazing rocks:

So we climbed the rocks.  Turns out they're made of decomposing granite and sort of turn to gravel beneath your feet.  Bizarre. And a little bit unsettling. 

From there, we could see our campsite...

Also from there, we hiked over the hill a bit and found a mountain lion's den (!).  The mountain lion was thankfully not in residence at the moment, but her dinner was.  There was a mostly eaten deer carcass in one corner of the den.  Definitely not my thing, this circle of life business, but it's not often you get a chance to stand a few feet from a lion's den, so I sucked it up.  I'll spare you the pictures, though it was far enough along to be more science project-y than sad.

The gimpy dog came along on most of the hike.  She wasn't supposed to, given her cast and bum foot, but she's hard to resist when she's begging...

... which is most of the time.  After her little jaunt up the hill and a lengthy battle with a local squirrel (she thought she was hunting it, but by the time she realized it had left the trail, the squirrel was 20 feet up the nearest tree chucking pine cones at her), our brave little soldier was down for the count.  A pressure sore from her cast caused her to spend the last 2 days of her vacation like this...

Poor thing.  She still had an awfully good time, and we got her cast all fixed up today so she's good as new.

We spent lots of time building fires.  Here's Mr. Right demonstrating his manly fire-building skills.  He's really pretty good at it...

And, once there's a fire... there's really nothing left to do but eat.  And eat.  And eat.  And then repeat...

That's our friend, M. rocking the potatoes and grilled corn.  We all like to cook, so the camping food is sometimes stupid complicated.  But yummy.  Really yummy.

And I spent some quality time finishing up my book (too much dirt to be knitting, unfortunately)...

(Pardon the make-up-less, non-showered look.  But really, nowhere to go but up from here.)  And taking in the scenery...

While Mr. Right helped our friends take down a dead tree that had slumped over.

And hassled the dog.  He hassles the dog a lot, but she secretly loves it.

We went riding 2 to-a-bike on our friends' dirt bikes all over creation, which was amazingly fun and a little scary, at least for those of us who had no handle bars at our disposal.  But it was a great way to see the area, and the local wild life including a whole lotta deer, a coyote and a red-tailed hawk.  No pictures here sadly, since I was busy hanging on for dear life. 

And yesterday, we ended the weekend with a toast to our good friends and their new little corner of the world.  It's a gorgeous spot, and I can't think of folks who are more deserving of a gorgeous spot of their own...

Except maybe Mr. Right and I, but that part is still down the road for us.  Cheers!