Rocky Mountain High...Colorado

Can you name the artist who sings that song?

That song sort of became the theme song for our camping trip this past weekend.

The view from Grand Mesa, elevation 10,500 feet where we camped.
You can see the nice green area we were at and then out to the West it is all dry and desert like.

We drove over to Western Colorado to meet up with some friends and check out the other side of Colorado. I was amazed at the contrast we saw in the scenery. We drove up through Vail and saw beautiful pine forests and well known ski resorts and then over towards Grand Junction it turned all desert and Nevada like. I will always prefer the green pine tree mountain look to the dry sage brush mountain look. As well as the scenery I will also take the cooler temperatures. We stopped in a small town called Palisade for lunch. It was 103 degrees and I was pretty apprehensive about camping near there (because it wasn't pretty and was so so so hot!) but then we drove up the mountain to our campground and found ourselves in a 70 degree Oasis. It might have had something to do with the 5,000 foot change in elevation as well. At Palisade we went to a BBQ place for lunch but unfortunately they were out of pork and we totally wanted a pulled pork sandwich but they did have huckleberry sodas and Mark loves huckleberry anything so at least that part of lunch was a success. We also got some of the famous Palisade Peaches and I will say I was impressed. As I have mentioned in other posts, I have really missed all the California produce stands so getting some delicious peaches was a plus.

What we drove though to get to the campground



Ta-Da! Little Bear Campground



Beautiful Colorado, I loved all the purple flowers.

The water was so pretty and refreshing

Mark really likes this picture. He says it looks like he is standing in front of some fake scenery but it is the real deal. It would have been super fun to have a canoe or kayak to take on the lake. As we were driving over we saw lots of people out rafting/kayaking and it made me realize why people love Colorado so much. There is so much outdoor stuff to do. I was pretty impressed with all the cyclist we saw riding up these huge mountains too!

Just 3 more hours.
This is what I was thinking as I laid awake and uncomfortable from about 4:30 on. This night was like one long nap where I kept waking up.

So when we go camping we are not really roughing it. We have our queen size air mattress and always camp somewhere that has at least 4 walls for a bathroom. We open up our sleeping bags so we can warm each other up if someone gets cold so its not even like we are in sleeping bags and generally this arrangement works really well but now we know that when I am 27 weeks pregnant it does not work. So neither of us had a great nights sleep but the campground was super pretty and it was nice to go somewhere new. My favorite part about camping is always the campfire anways and we had that and it was perfect. We have some friends here who want to go camping in August but I am very much doubting that I could handle that.

* John Denver is the one who sings that song. We felt pretty cool listening to it as we drove through the Rocky Mountains and watched people raft down the rivers and do all the things Colorado is famous for.