A typical CO weekend?

The cold, rainy weather is back, but we had a few perfect days in between! Joel’s finished his first week of work on Saturday. They don’t normally work on Saturdays, but the rain and Memorial Day holiday put the company a bit behind on maintaining the properties, so Joel worked Tuesday through Saturday!

Friday night, we had a little night on the town and went to eat at a great Greek restaurant in Old Colorado City- we were able to eat outside and stopped for ice cream afterwards. This is the part of town where we ate our second day in Colorado Springs, and it is a neat old area of town with lots of shops and restaurants.

Even though Joel had to work, we tried to make the most of our first real weekend, and went on our first of (hopefully) many Colorado camping trips. One of Joel’s co-workers gave us a general idea of where we should go, so when Joel got home Saturday afternoon, we packed up and headed up the mountain. Our poor little Ford Contour didn’t know what hit her as the road got steeper and steeper and quickly turned to dirt.

Nonetheless, we made it to a spot that looked good for camping, and had a great time! Check out the view from our tent:

It was a beautiful weekend! We didn’t wake up until 9:00 on Sunday morning, and after packing up camp, we hiked up the road for a couple of hours until a storm started rolling in and we decided to heed the warnings we’d heard about lightning strikes in the mountains and headed back to the car. On the way back down, Joel was walking in front of me and jumped about 10 feet sideways when he looked over and found this figure staring at us:

We spent the next few minutes watching this deer graze through the woods. We ran across some other creature that remains a mystery to us. I even got out my Complete Field Guide to North American Wildlife when we got home, and we still don’t have a clue what animal we saw dart off through the woods as we rounded a turn. It was mainly black with long hair and a long hairy fluffy tail…it was bigger than a skunk, low to the ground, and sort of hopped like a rabbit. Maybe it was a baby Big Foot?

The quick camping trip was a perfect escape that made Joel’s one day off feel a little more like a full weekend.

Not much else to report here…I’ll be headed home Friday to take my state board exams early next week, so I’ll be packing the freezer for Joel as this week goes on.

A great local restaurant we found Sunday night, and there is a location right around the corner: