Into the wild...

Friday afternoon while we talked about our weekend plans to go into the mountains and hike due to this shocking weather occurrence called "SUN & WARMTH" we had the crazy notion that "Hey, why don't we camp!" Why ? Well because Cal had soccer till 2pm on Sat and Finn had a party at 2pm on Sunday and that would just be nuts...and so we loaded up the car and embraced being nuts!

Destination : Meuller State Park

We scoped out a campsite, arranged firewood delivery from a very nice Ranger & hit the trail...

First order of business, how to alert others to wildlife sightings! Obviously shouting "HEY LOOK AT THAT ELK OVER THERE" may unnerve the elk so we have a system in place that involves flapping your arms up and down to attract attention as demonstrated below by Maisie...

Next as we hiked we covered safety, the Ranger had told us the Bears were all waking up and were a little crabby and a lot hungry....

Me: Ok, so what do we have with us that the bears want ?

Finn : ????????

Maisie : Our flesh ?

Me: SNACKS people, we have snacks in the backpack.....so we throw that towards the bear...

Cal: What if that angers the bear ?

Me: Ok throw it near the bear....

Mai: Your phone is in there....the bear will eat your phone!!!!

Finn: I want to go home...

My very shy children demonstrate hiking Ministry of silly walks style...(they just discovered Monty Python)

Ooooh look someone was nice enough to build my dream house right over there....

Flappy arms, flappy arms....I spot wildlife!

Behold the Last of the Mohican's pose... 

Christmas Card 2014 contender ?

Back at camp we put up the tent and started on dinner....now something you may not know about altitude is that water takes longer to boil, not usually a big deal unless you're at 9600ft above sea level and trying to boil water on a camp stove...After 45 min's our chef for the evening decided she'd waited long enough and threw in the pasta....45 min's later and starving to the point of chewing off our own hand we ate the chewy yet mushy gag worthy pasta covered in masses of sauce and meatballs to try and disguise it...next time we're bringing hot dogs! 

(Please note the chef is eating a granola bar as she cooks...starving I tell you!)

Perks of the wilderness...no wifi no matter how hard she tried which means your teens may actually hold conversations with you!

An after dinner hike in pajamas on the Wapiti Nature trail, they were all out of guides so Cal took charge..."look at those beautiful rocks"..."On our left you'll see trees..." very informative!

1 mile & a mediocre by Colorado standards sunset later we were back at camp, fire blazing & trying out this Pinterest find...roasting starburst!

O.M.G.

You impale the starburst on your skewer, let it bubble, pull it out, let it cool & the outside becomes this crunchy caramelized deliciousness with an ooey gooey center...better than s'mores any day!!!

Of course we made s'mores too....we're classy and use Cadbury dairy milk not Hershey that makes us Europeans with our refined chocolate palates gag. Cadbury doesn't melt as easy so the key was to place 2 squares of it on a cracker, hold it near the fire to soften, add the marshmallow and another cracker then catch melty drippy heavenly chocolate with your tongue....OR as Finn demonstrates, just shove it all in your mouth!

Finn got brave & wanted to roast his own marshmallows, he's had a fire phobia before which I suppose is natural, you tell your kids to not play with matches, be safe around open flames & suddenly you go camping and say "hey skewer whatever food you want, set fire to it & eat it!" We had to work on the show & tell portion of roasting as he liked to turn his whole body, skewer & flaming marshmallow included to show us which sent Maisie & I diving for safety a couple of times!

Saturday night I can confirm was the worst nights sleep I've ever had...someone who shall remain nameless but whose name might rhyme with Daisy forgot an air mattress so we put two together and Finn, Mai & Myself slept on it...Mai wanted the middle, so poor Finn was basically catapulted into the air as I laid down on the opposite side! Shortly after the screaming of "He put his foot in my butt crack" "Get your hand of my boob" "OMG who is dry humping me?" "MOMMY I'm stuck in my sweatshirt" died down, one of the air mattresses slowly started to deflate...and deflate...and deflate...

Around 2am Finn screamed "MOMMEEEEEEEEEE A BEAR" I wasn't asleep but that phrase will scare the crap out of you no matter what, especially as all the food was in the car but we were most definitely covered in sticky sweet melted starbursts, chocolate and marshmallows!!! Turns out it was just a dream but required position changes so he could sleep...With me now in the middle and both kids breathing heavily on me, Mai groaning in her sleep & Finn randomly kicking my smooth parts it was inevitable I was not sleeping....

At 5.30 I shimmied out and started at fire...at 6am Finn shouted "HEY, can you keep it down out there" I resisted the urge to feed him to the bears!

At 7.30 hungry people started emerging from the tent only to discover we forgot syrup, I was in need of caffeine so we headed into town to eat....

God forbid she open the door to reach something...much more fun to do this & then yell "MOMMA....I'm stuck...." of course I took pics before helping her :)

Undeterred by lack of sleep we headed out to hike the Pike View Pond trail, the kids found snow & of course had to have a snowball fight until Finn realized he was shin deep in snow in shorts and that gets cold fast....

Cal was in charge of the map and I'm not entirely sure we were on the trail after a while but it didn't matter because all focus was lost when Mai yelled "I SEE A SKELETON", flappy arms evidently does not apply to animals that have crossed over (Oh boy...watching way too much Long Island Medium)

Further inspection showed it was not human, THANK GOD! nor could we find the head...yes, we looked! Mai was very excited by her find and donned gloves from the first aid kit so she could take it to the visitors center.

I'm quite sure we did not look shady AT ALL, emerging from the forest, bedraggled, sleep deprived, not on a trail, carrying half a skeleton!

The volunteers at the visitors center were amazing, they logged our find and called to see if there was a ranger around, there was and he came and talked to us for about 20 minutes. He was 95% certain it was a coyote and fed into our gnarly gruesome minds with the tale that it looked like it had been attacked by either a bear or a mountain lion because of some of the missing bones....

Mai thankfully declined the offer that she could bring it home, the skull I'm sure would have been a different matter entirely!

We ended our weekend with a walk around the Dragonfly Nature Trail, Finn took a dive in the parking lot and assured us he would never walk again...5 min's later he was chasing Cal and Mai precariously close to a pond! We had an awesome time despite some drama filled moments, I hope to be caught up on sleep by some time later this month but I'm not counting on it....

Our next camping adventure....3 weeks from now in Rocky Mountain National Park....

Bring on the hot dogs and starbursts!!!