Our Ouray Adventure

It's been a few months since we visited Ouray and backpacked/camped, but I thought I'd take a second and write about it... Ouray is about a 6 hour drive from where we are located here in Colorado Springs. After driving for a couple hours, we stopped in Gunnison (a beautiful little town) and had some breakfast at a quaint little restaurant that served us a delicious meal. We continued on and made it to Ouray a few hours later. Ouray is much smaller than we thought it'd be, but absolutely gorgeous. The mountains there are a different "breed" than the ones here int he front range. They are so much more jagged and rugged - they call it the Switzerland of America and I can sure see why. We drove on the Million Dollar Highway (which was a bit scary and it wasn't even bad weather!). Waterfalls galore surround this pretty place! We drove on to our "base camp" site a little out of town and when we parked, I heard a funny hissing noise coming from under the hood of my beloved little car (whom I affectionately have named "April"). We popped the hood and saw steam immediately. That's not good! Upon further investigation, we determined that my radiator was cracked and would need fluid and a quick fix. Ugh... it was about 5:00 and all the little shops around would be closing soon. This was not good! Fortunately, we were able to drive a few miles away and into another town that was close. We picked up some coolant and epoxy (thank you Dad for being available to offer your wisdom over the phone when we called!). We returned to our "base camp" site and made camp that night - trying to put away our fears and disappointments about my car having a mishap!

We woke the next morning and broke camp after some small breakfast. Having let April's engine cool off overnight, it was time to put some epoxy on the crack. Brian took care of the epoxy while I tore down camp and soon we were off into the mountains.

Wow, what an incredible hike! It was steep - but VERY pretty. Waterfalls here and there along the way made the walk more enjoyable and I couldn't believe how GREEN everything was. It was so beautiful. After some tricky river crossings where the water was just above freezing (it was pure snowmelt!), we decided to make camp at the base of the most beautiful waterfall we had ever seen in our entire lives. I think that's what heaven must be like - the place where we camped was surreal. (The picture of the waterfall with the rainbow was taken on a hill just above our campsite.)

The next day, we hiked all the way up to Ice Lake and beyond - we found an old abandoned building that appears to have been a research station of some sort a decade (or three!) ago. It was really neat to wander around inside and see all the broken down and rusted beds and other equipment.

The trip down was a little easier since we were no longer climbing UP, but the river crossings were even more tricky! This time, we gave up on trying to keep our feet dry and we just waded across the river with our boots on. It was sure nice to get a clean pair of socks and shoes on when we got back to the car!!

Here are some pictures from our adventure. Enjoy!

Marmots, Pink Elephants, and Icebergs - Oh, My!

Since Sara loves wildflowers and Brian loves marmots, we found a place to go backpacking that would have both. We decided to go to Lake Dorothy which is just outside of Boulder, Colorado. We left for our trip on July 20th and headed for the Fourth of July Campground to "car camp" one night and then head up the mountain to Lake Dorothy the next day. On Monday (the 20th) when we got to the campground, it wasn't too busy... but when we left on Wednesday, it was PACKED! WOW! We were so glad we had come up when we did because otherwise we wouldn't have had any place to even park the truck! :)

So we camped the first night there on our cushy air mattress and enjoyed eating our delicious hobo dinners and then crashing in the tent.

The next morning, we packed our things up and got our backpacks ready for the climb up. It was about a 3-mile climb, and it was pretty tame in comparison with our last two backpacking trips. We only gained about two-thousand feet on this one... so, not bad. Oh, and the wildflowers on the trail were breathtaking! We saw everything from Monk's Hood to Columbines and Cow Parsnip and Delphinium. I was THRILLED when I found the flower I had never seen before but had always wanted to see: Pink Elephant. My favorite animal is the elephant and the fact that there is a wildflower (which I love flowers, anyway) that looks like an elephant's head is incredible! (It's the first picture...)
On the hike up, we also had a breathtaking view of a HUGE waterfall... it was incredible! It was really running, too... guess there is still a lot of snow melt to feed the waterfall.
There was so much water we walked through, over, and next to on the way up! It was such a gorgeous hike; we could see why it was such a popular trail. There was one pretty big waterfall we crossed over by jumping from rock to rock. Fun!

As we neared the top of the mountain, it got pretty windy. It had been warm on the way up, but as soon as it started to get windy, it also got chilly. We were almost to Lake Dorothy, though... so we just pushed through the wind. There were times that the wind was so strong that it was pushing me sideways (my backpack acted as a big sail!). Once we arrived at the lake, we dipped into a slight valley, so the wind was a bit better.

We found a really cool windbreak shelter that was right next to the lake and pitched our tent next to it so we could use the structure for cooking. After our tent was set up and we had things somewhat arranged, we hiked around the lake and did some exploring.

There was still a lot of snow in the area and even a few icebergs on the lake! One of the floating icebergs was right on one of the shores that we explored and Brian couldn't resist... he had to try to jump onto it! He made it!

There were some mouse-like creatures that we heard first - and then we began to see them darting around on the rocks... but they were bigger than mice. They were about the size of small rabbits! At first, we thought they were baby marmots. But after seeing several of them, we realized that they were not baby marmots, but something else... but what? We had never seen anything like these little guys! They made a cute little squeaking noise. After getting back home and researching it, we found out that they were little "pikas." Come to find out, the anime character Pikatchu isn't a made up little animal after all! Pikatchu is a Pika!

We saw a marmot, too. During the first day when we were there, we only saw the one same marmot hanging around the lake. We never heard any marmot noises (which is a squeak-like noise, but not quite like the Pika noise). "Hmm," we thought. "Maybe he is the only one around here for some reason?" He did have some scars on his back which indicated that maybe he had been in a marmot-scrap and lost. An outcast marmot, perhaps? Fortunately, the next day we did some more hiking around camp and found some others. Whew! There were more up there and the poor little guy wasn't alone. :) This is a picture of the one marmot that was hanging around camp. Brian has a new favorite animal! Marmots are so cute (and funny to watch!).
The night after we made camp, we cooked ourselves some yummy Mountain House dinners (freeze-dried meals that really are quite tasty... just add boiling water). We had green beans and beef stew and hot chocolate and tea. It was a delicious meal! (Brian can certainly cook a good meal!)Even after we ate all of that, we were still a little hungry. Fortunately, Brian had packed an extra meal - Mexican Rice and Chicken. It smelled so good and tasted great.

After dinner, we brushed our teeth and got ready for bed... even though it was only about 8:00pm - we were exhausted. There was still a bit of daylight left, too, which was amazing. I wanted to badly to stay awake and see the stars, so Brian did his best to keep me awake by talking to me and playing Uno (our favorite game!). After beating him at several games in a row, darkness had finally come and we poked our heads outside our cozy tent and gazed at the night sky. It was so cool to see all the stars that are normally washed out by city lights. We were able to clearly see the milky way!

Sleep came easily to us both after such a fun, long day of hiking and playing outside.

I was unaware of when Brian got up and left the tent in the middle of the night... until I heard him outside on the rocks nearby hurling up his Mexican Rice and Chicken! I was dreaming one minute, and then woke up to realize that he really wasn't next to me and he really was outside getting sick! Oh no! (There is always that moment of denial where you say, "No, this isn't happening!")

I found my poor husband out there getting sick in the middle of the night! There wasn't much I could do besides give him hugs and pray that he would feel better. Poor Brian had a throbbing headache and lost pretty much everything in his stomach. :( Finally, after some "midnight star-gazing" we went back to bed (and took some Rolaids that I so conveniently remembered to pack!).

In the morning, Brian felt all better! Wow, I was relieved.

We wanted to try hiking up to the top of Mount Neva which overlooked Lake Dorothy, so we hiked around the back side of the mount after eating some breakfast. On the trail over, we saw some very interesting looking birds... I believe they were White-Tailed Ptarmigans. The hike up the back side of the mount was a climb, but worth the view! We overlooked Lake Dorothy and could just barely see our little tent amongst the rocks. (Can you see the little black speck in the upper left corner near the lake? That was the shelter we found... our tent was right next to it.) We didn't quite make it to the top of Mount Neva, but we were totally satisfied with where we did make it to. It was a very pretty view! We hiked back down to camp and figured it was time to pack things up and start heading back down the mountain. So after paking up our sleeping bags, our tent, and everything else, we said goodbye to the marmots and the pikas and started back out on the trail leading down.

The wildflowers took my breath away on the way down just as much as they did on the way up! What a pretty trail.

Stinky and sweaty, we piled our stuff into the truck and headed home. It was a great trip! I hope that eventually we can get to a point that we can go more often. I'm just glad that I have such a mountain man to go campin' with! :)