Camping in Denver (6/24/09)

Today was a very cool day. We left aweful Nebraska and right now, we are in Colorado. We stopped off in Denver for a few hours and walked around the 16th Street Mall, the main drag in town. Immediately, I noticed that people in Denver seem to be pretty laid back and friendly, always smiling as they pass on the street. This is a little strange for a Chicagoan, but what is even stranger is how different black people are as compared to the urban black people back home. There is little difference (besides skin color) between blacks and whites here, which seems to really underscore just how segregated Chicago is. The accents of blacks and whites are the same, the mannerisms, and you see black people at all levels of society. It really was striking to me in a refreshing sort of way.

Other things about Denver that I love: men seem to wear their hair longer, all the outdoor seating in restaurants is filled to capacity, the air is clean and as Daniel pointed out, even gross-looking fat men eat salads. Everyone just seems generally healthier here. You see lots of people riding bikes (like serious bike riding, all decked out with the special clothes and shoes etc.) and backpacking with rock-climbing gear. The city is surrounded by mountains and in June, you can still see snow caps and runoff falling down the sides in waterfalls.

We left Denver at around 2 p.m. and headed to a remote campground in the White River National Forest in Minturn, CO off of Hwy 24 that we miraculously found despite the fact that our fancy map did not show the little roads we needed to get here. It was a phenomenal drive to get here but a scary one as we got caught in a wicked rainstorm. Buckets of rain pouring down, lightening rods everywhere. Just what you want on winding mountain roads! We couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of us. Scaaaaa-ry!

We finally made it to our campsite which was about 20 feet from the banks of Homestake Creek which is really more of a rushing river. There were only 11 camp sites here and Daniel was worried that they’d all be taken. It ended up not being a problem seeing as it was a weekday. I will admit, I was pretty apprehensive on the 7-mile drive on unpaved road leading to the campsite in the middle of nowhere because we kept seeing bullet spray all over the road signs! Fantastic! All I could think about was how we get zero cell phone reception or internet, we have no weapons to protect ourselves with if we get approached by some crazy mountain man, and we don’t know the area. But those thoughts were quickly tempered by how absolutely gorgeous the land was.

After we set up the tent, this older gentleman from across the way approached us. He seemed friendly enough and introduced himself as “Jack from Texas.” The next thing he said was, “Do y’all wanna see some moose?” How often does someone ask you that? So naturally, I blurt out, “Yeah! Where?” Daniel, always more cautious than me, simultaneously comes out with a flat out “No.” I don’t know why I said yes so quickly because as Dan and I determined later, we were both thinking the same thing—that the moose Jack was referring to was really a moose’s head, kept in his deep freezer. Turns out, Jack was really cool. He and his wife had the super fancy RV across from our camp site. They had been there for a month already and he was working for the forest service as a host at this particular campground. He told us about this reservoir a few miles up the road. In the little Subaru that could, we drove over rocky, unpaved road to get to it. That’s when Daniel and I realized how much we loved our dust-covered, filthy, little Subaru.

We camped in our little blue tent that night. We had gone to bed early because we forgot to buy a lantern so we couldn’t see anything in the pitch black. Also, the temperature dipped into the 40s. Our sleeping bags were plenty warm but we didn’t have any good padding, Daniel didn’t have a pillow (he made fun of me when I bought mine at REI) and it was not the most comfortable sleep either of us had. He ended up moving to the car during the night. I didn’t complain though because I knew that he really wanted my first experience camping to be a good one and I knew that it meant a lot to him that I had a positive attitude. I racked up a few good-girlfriend points, I think.