first camping trip of the season

So, the travel bug is raging in our house. We've been sort of cooped up this winter, or so it seems when the first hint of spring warmth breezes its way around the corner. Usually we don't start camping until May, and of course to get to anything remotely warm you have to cross the Rockies and head out to the red-rock desert.

Maybe the trip was doomed from the start. It certainly is early in the season for a camping trip and we were worried about hitting ski traffic. On Friday morning, in the midst of my crazy packing (have I mentioned I detest packing? Yeah, not a great trait for someone who loves to travel), Brontë got a HUGE splinter (more like wood chunk) stuck through her paw which I could not get out. Daniel tried when he got home but she was hysterical. He ended up taking her to the vet--at 5pm, right when we were hoping to roll out the door. Next, we got caught in a terrible snowstorm going up Vail Pass (10,662 feet). Yes, lowlanders, the country's main interstate, I-70, goes up and over this pass. No big deal, right? Uh, no. At least not this time. Probably the worst driving conditions we've ever been in, unless you count the brief but COMPLETE white-out I experienced a few weekends ago on top of Loveland Pass with some girlfriends. Anyway, we made it over the pass safely, thank God, and inched and slid our way down into Vail, where we regrouped with some hot tea and hot chocolate at this adorable little diner/donut shop right beside the gas station. Only in Vail.

At this point, we were way behind schedule and tired. Moab was still another 4 hours away. We decided to push for Colorado National Monument, just south of Fruita and about an hour and a half east of Moab. We set up in the dark and crashed. 

In the morning, we woke up to this.

And this.

See that tiny road down there? That's the road we came up in the dark, completely unaware of what was around us.

  Have I mentioned that all these pictures were taken just behind our campsite? Good thing none of us wandered too far in the dark!

After some hot drinks and egg burritos, it was time to explore the park.

That's Independence Rock behind us, the most famous of many monoliths in the park. Owen is holding up a picture of a big-horn sheep that a ranger gave him. She told us to be on the lookout for them, but we didn't spot any.

The weather was great--high 70s and sunny. Of course we had to get off-road, so we found a 4x4 road and scrambled up a steep path to this rocky point. We met a really nice older gentleman wearing a chunky Peruvian sweater and toting a big camera, who lives half the year in--get this--Chadds Ford, PA. 

We have some of our best family time on roadtrips. It's just us--talking, playing games, laughing, singing, being silly, dreaming. The kids are incredible in the car. We let them watch one movie at the very tail-end of the trip when we were all fried (more on that later), but other than that, it was just us, nature, and imagination. Love that.

 Picnic, Kortsch-style. We called this our African safari picnic.

We had a great day, driving around in all that red rock with huge sweeping vistas that make you feel small and precious all at once. It's pretty amazing that our last-minute, second-choice location happens to be one of the wonders of the American West. And it's always fun to discover someplace new.

This is when things started to go downhill. We had the genius idea to beat the potential ski traffic on 70 by coming home on 50 and 285 (smaller roads) and camping on the way home. Um, really dumb. After several hours of driving, we arrived at our hoped-for campsite by Blue Mesa Reservoir in the Curecanti National Recreation Area, to discover the reservoir was frozen solid. Great. So it was either sleep in the cold (with snow predicted) or just haul ourselves home. 

After a rather depressing dinner in a dusty steakhouse in Gunnison (which seems to looks exactly the same as it did in 1964), four more hours of driving, and 24 hours from when we left, we were back in our beds, completely exhausted but glad, too, for a peek at raw nature, deep silence, star-flung skies, and red dirt. We'll be back soon!