Father and son camping trip...

This was the second annual father and son camping trip up to the base of Long's Peak with Gavin and I (Brent). I took a few days of vacation, and we headed up on a weekday afternoon after Gavin's school so we wouldn't his class. We went to roughly the same location we went to the past year, as I love that it's accessible but you aren't camping with 100 strangers right next to you. The interesting twist in this year's trip was that it was closer to fall, and rain and low 40s were predicted up at that elevation...but at least we thought it would make for a good story. It did not disappoint.

Gavin was very helpful and loves to be put to task on a project like putting together tent poles and surveying the camping area for anything that he can jump off of or get dirty with. Here he is super excited to finally get the tent up. It was around 4 pm when we achieved this great feat, and then we were on to the next task: gathering about 14 small trees' worth of lumber for the fire.

We spent the next 45 minutes hauling 8 foot dead trees down to the camp site from about 50 meters up the hillside. Gavin always loves when he finds a slightly smaller tree (5-6 feet) that he can wrestle down all by himself. We broke out every boyscout memory that I had about building a fire (especially because about the time we started the fire it was drizzling and most of the wood was a bit wet). Gavin was able to find enough dry pine needles at the base of some trees to get us started along with some newspaper I brought from home. Gavin was starting to get cold so we put him close to the fire and started to cook some dinner.

Here is Gavin eating some cookies after our pine-tree-stick roasted hot dog dinner. It drizzled on us for most of dinner and we decided to head into the tent early for some books and a movie before it got any worse. This turned out to be a good idea, because it really started to come down after we got into the tent.

This was the last picture of the night before we decided to try to get some sleep. What we weren't anticipating was waking up a few hours later with wet feet in the tent. Apparently, my construction of the tent was a bit faulty and after three to four solid hours of pouring rain the tarp beneath the tent had been catching water and turned the tent bottom into a water bed. The water had leeched up through the bottom of the tent into our sleeping bags, and now we were getting wet. I had a tough decision to make--whether to stick it out or try to bail home--but at only 10:30 pm at night, it was clear we had to pack it up. Unfortunately, I had to wake Gavin (who was in quite a confused daze) and get him into the cold car, tear down the tent in pouring, 40 degree rain in the dark, and now make the 10 mile drive down dirt jeep trails to at least a paved road for the hour trip all the way back home. It was a bit painful, but all in all we had a great afternoon and evening and only missed waking up in the morning in the tent. I look forward to our next trip and the upcoming adventures it will hold.