Why I Love Colorado

This weekend Austin and I drove up to Poudre Canyon (the French would pronounce it poo-dru but we Americans seem to think it is poo-der) My aunt Mandy and Uncle Leon have been attending the Campus Crusade for Christ summer conference in Fort Collins (every other summer) for longer than I've been alive, and they have gone camping their last weekend in Colorado for a long while too. Chelsea and Jesse always went as staff kids, but now that we're all grown up and Chelsea and her husband Kyle are also on staff, they attended the conference this summer as staff rather than kids. So - Friday night we met Mandy, Leon, Chelsea, Kyle and their friends from college Jenny and Caleb who are also on staff. The drive up to the campsite was breathtaking. There were countless times that I just stared in amazement thinking "I REALLY get to live here. Man I'm blessed!" The mountains are gorgeous and then to add to the beauty, the Cache le Poudre river runs right by the highway most of the way up into the Canyon.

We got there later than we'd hoped, but we were happy we did because the rain stopped just in time for us to arrive and set up our tent. The cold didn't go with the rain - we were all freezing during the night, but it allowed for good snuggling rather than sweating through the night (that's the camping I'm accustomed to in Texas) Saturday morning I woke up and this was the view as I unzipped the tent:

How could you not feel like you're in heaven? All night we got to hear the water running - like those little machines you buy at Sharper Image, except it was real! :) I'm just amazed - clearly. Saturday was a beautiful day - which was a good end to a rainy/chilly week - so we were able to enjoy the outdoors a lot. Austin and Leon each wandered off periodically to fish - and you should have seen the look on Austin's face when he brought his fish back to the campsite. Our camp-mates had eaten fish the night before for dinner, so none of them were going to eat any, and neither Austin or I like fish, so he knew no one would eat it. But that didn't stop him from walking a mile down the road, fish in hand, to show us his catch.

Its hard to see here - I have better pictures but they're at home, but it was a brown trout (not sure why they call it brown when it had red spots all over it) and it was officially the biggest catch of the weekend. Yippee! Right at the water's edge of our campsite is a little "pool" that people have built over the years - there's an arc of rocks that stops the fast-flowing water and makes it a little wading-pond. Water is FREEZING so I didn't spend TOO much time wading, but it was fun. Kyle and Caleb had worked hard on building up the pool, so they had declared that whoever caught the next fish would start stocking their pond. Austin's fish was a bit shocked (and near death) from being out of the water for so long, so when Austin put him down in the water he just layed there, almost "belly up" as nemo would say, and we were all worried the fishy wasn't going to make it. Layla caught the fish in the corner of her eye and clearly needed to know what it was - so she walked into the pond and tried to play with the fish with her paws. It was like CPR - that was all the fish needed to breathe life back into his lungs and scurry off. We were hoping the rocks would keep him in the pond, but somehow he set himself free and down the river he went.

I could keep writing - but really, all I'd be reiterating is how beautiful Colorado is, how blessed I feel to be fortunate enough to live here, and how great of a time we had with my family all weekend. I'm glad they decided to stay one day longer so that we could come up and camp with them! We're planning to go again in a couple weeks for Austin's birthday...we haven't decided on a place, but if its half as beautiful as Poudre Canyon you can bet you'll be hearing about that one too :)

Happy Monday once again!!!