It’s midsummer and it shouldn’t come as a shock that the blog hasn’t seen much activity because hubby and I are in full swing of summer activities over here! We have been getting in every camping, hiking, and biking adventure that we can get our hands (and feet) on during the weekends, so it’s time to catch up!

The great thing about being married to someone who is your outdoorsy soulmate is that hubby and I don’t even have to come up with any big strategy or plan when we want to go camping for the weekend. Most times we somehow telepathically decide the Thursday or Friday night before the weekend that we are going to pack the vehicle and hit the road sometime Saturday for some chill “car camping”.

We even have this “car camping” gig down so good that we can get up late Saturday morning or take care of several morning chores and errands before we haphazardly pack the vehicle with the usual stuff to sneak off and be lazy hermits in the mountains. With car camping (setting up camp next to your vehicle vs. backpacking and hiking to a spot to set up camp with only the stuff you can fit in your pack), we don’t really have to think strategically about what to bring for a night in the mountains/forest. We just BRING IT ALL and hit the road!

The biggest decision we have to make is just where to go! Our only strategy for finding a place to camp is to identify forest roads near a place we want to go in our gigantic Colorado Atlas and Gazetteer book and just drive down them to see what we can find.

Sometimes these dirt forest roads only require a two-wheel-drive vehicle, but most times they are bumpy, rutted-out roads that require a four-wheel-drive vehicle, ballsy driving skills, and lots of patience (I definitely lack the last two and sometimes hubby lacks the last one when I insist we keep driving down these awesome roads to find the perfect camping spot with a kick-ass view, margarita bar next to a stream, and a unicorn petting zoo).

Our first adventure this season when the weather started to thaw in late May, was a two-night weekend camping trip near Silverthorne, Colorado, which is only about an hour and a half outside Denver.

After driving for about an hour on a dirt forest road #200 outside Silverthorne, we finally reached what might as well have been a camping spot in the clouds. We were so high up on the mountain that the snow-capped jagged peaks of the Gore Range across from us in the far distance almost seemed to be at eye-level. Forest roads that you can drive up on this high in elevation are far and few between!

The views were certainly incredible, but they came at a price… it was so windy!!!

Hubby set up the tent under my strict order that our room for the night have a view of the mountains, only for us to realize 10 minutes later that the wind was just not going to die down, so we had to move it further away from the windy ledge we were on.

Later, the wind died down and I insisted on moving it back… and then, not too soon after that, the wind came right back! We ended up enduring our first night with constant winds that must have been at least 30 mph.

The winds finally died down the next day and we enjoyed a much more peaceful second night before we had to return home, far away from these amazing views that were stuck in our heads!