Lake Granby camping

We are not really campers. We do camp now and then, but mainly to facilitate some other activity like climbing. This past weekend, though, we went camping for the sake of camping. Our friends the Johnsens reserved campsites 6 months ahead of time, since that's what you have to do in Colorado, and we spent the weekend at Lake Granby. I was pretty excited for a weekend at a lake. A lot of the lakes in Colorado are reservoirs that you're not allowed to swim in, but Lake Granby is an exception. I have fond memories of growing up swimming at Rowledge Pond, and I envisioned lots of swimming and canoeing and sandcastles and that sort of thing. I forgot, however, that CO mountain lakes are FREEZING. And full of rocks. They don't exactly lend themselves to swimming. Plus, it was about 50 degrees when we arrived Friday afternoon. We were in hats and puffy jackets.

Nevertheless, as far as camping goes, it was a pretty nice spot. We had a little corner of the lake to ourselves, fell asleep to the sound of a big waterfall... until Amelie woke us all up a couple hours later and approximately every two hours after that. Amelie is at a rough age for camping. During the day she wanted to crawl around, but the ground was pretty rough for crawling and she would shovel handfuls of dirt and rocks into her mouth faster than we could get them out. At night, she had a hard time sleeping.  And also, I managed to come down with a 12 hour stomach bug that had me puking in the outhouse several times.  Nothing like puking in the outhouse.  Still, we made it to Rocky Mountain and had our best moose day ever-- we saw 6 moose including a mom and a baby.  We visited the Grand Lake Lodge, which Mark remembers from his youth, and walked around Monarch Lake which was beautiful.  Logan had a ball throwing rocks in the lake with Quin and Lucian. It was really windy, which was pretty fortunate because any time the wind died down the bugs set in.  We're really lucky to live in a bug-free spot. I forget how annoying they can be.

So, we had a good weekend... we made it through the whole weekend, which was a small victory.  But we unanimously cancelled our camping plans for the following 2 weekends and reserved a hotel instead. On the bright side, Logan did well... so maybe we'll try again when Amelie is 3:).

A & Logan at our campsite

Amelie's first camping trip

A at the campsite with Lake Granby in the background

Me & Amelie at the campsite

Mark & Logan hiking near our campsite

She was so excited to be let loose to crawl around the tent after being held all day

Mother and baby moose in Rocky Mountain

Moose thinking about crossing river

Moose crossing river

You can never have enough moose pictures.  (Except when you do... I think we took about 100)

A nest Mark spotted at the top of a snag on the edge of the lake.

Family picture at the Grand Lake Lodge

At Grand Lake Lodge.  They had really nice flowers.

Our second day camping was Amelie's birthday.  Here she is celebrating.  I missed this due to the stomach bug but I'm told she loved her cupcake.  She got sad at first because the frosting got stuck all over her hands and she couldn't grab the cake.  Mark de-frosted her and then all was good.