The last two weekends I went camping. It turns out when I’m hanging out with other people I don’t take nearly as many pictures (when I even remember my camera). I ended up with no pictures from camping in the Crags (north-west side of Pike’s Peak), though I did have the excuse that my car died on the way there so I missed the group hike to where the view was.
The next weekend I went camping with a couple friends on national forest land near Tarryall. As you can see, it’s quite distant from Pike’s Peak:
Here’s the view of the campsite from the top of the rock ridge behind it (I never did take a picture looking at it, just looking down from it):
My tent is the green one under a tree to the far left of the picture, and the red Subaru Outback is the new-ish car that replaced the car that died on the way to the Crags. That actually worked out rather well for this campout because the last bit of road isn’t really maintained and I very much used both the all-wheel-drive (in the mud pit after it rained) and ground clearance (uneven rocky road) of my Subaru.
The spot where I really wish I’d had my camera with me was when we went mountain biking up one of the other roads to some old cabins (ranging from a log cabin built into the side of the hill to a structure that used milled lumber and concrete). That was my first time mountain biking: now I’m occasionally browsing craigslist looking for a good deal on a mountain bike.
The family that was hosting the campout (they brought their camper and toys and did most of the cooking) had a hummingbird feeder set up. I was rather impressed by the amount of traffic it got, though none of my attempts at getting a picture of a hummingbird actually came out. The hummingbirds weren’t overly willing to share, so all weekend we got to listen to their little trills of aggression as they chased each other away from the feeder.
Since I hadn’t been in a couple weeks (due to camping/no car) I did the incline way to early this morning. Here’s the sun rising through they haze of smoke from distant wildfires:
It was cold and tiring, but despite not really eating breakfast beforehand (a fruit cup and a granola bar on the way there) I beat my previous best time up. Here’s a ground squirrel that agreed with me that it was chilly (it was shivering):
