The kids turned 8 and 10 last week, as their birthdays are a few days apart and we celebrated by taking them camping to the Ridgway State Park and Reservoir. What an incredible place, just 45 minutes away. Clean, shady campsites, quiet and calm neighbors, incredible views of the Sneffles Range and a huge freezing cold lake to lounge by all day.
It was my first Friday off of work with my new schedule and I kind of made the mistake of pushing anything important off until that day, then I ran around in a kind of frantic haze forgetting some of the most important items for our weekend: specialty cupcakes I had ordered to surprise the kids, and charcoal. I managed to pul it off by surprising them with strawberry shortcakes and candles and they were such a hit it was decided it would become
the traditional birthday cake from now on.
Francis claimed it was the best birthday cake he had ever had. And Little Rose is such a freak about whipped cream we let her cover her buckwheat pancake with it on Sunday morning. Cupcake shmupcake.One of the delightful things about the campground there is we can ride our bikes around the loops and look at everyone's setups, analyzing the best sites for future visits, based on shade, privacy, early morning sun, sunsets, lake views, etc...
When I first started dating JC it was extremely difficult for me to have every other weekend be an inactive one. When we had the kids they were 5 and 7 and we really couldn't do very much, and we still can't do a ton of exercise, but now, as busy as our lives are, I have grown rather fond of the quiet restful kids weekends. We spent all Saturday and all Sunday lounging in the sun and shade by the lake, reading and snacking and plunging into the water.
A few words about the "beach" as everyone calls it. The way it is set up there is a grassy slope with a tree here and there that we choose to inhabit. When and if you decide you shall cool yourself off with a dip in the green water it is a 3-part process, not including peeling yourself up from your grassy slumber.
Part 1: You must cross a stretch of "sand" from the sidewalk to the water that consists of dark gray, brown and black pebbles the size of pea gravel yet decidedly un-smooth. Approximately one-third of the way to the water's edge the gravel begins to emanate the heat of the sun back into the underside of your feet, and you break into a sprint until you can step into the cooling effects of the water.
Part 2: You must immerse yourself in the water, even though now you realize it is far colder than you had anticipated, the sun has moved behind a cloud, the wind has picked up, and well, you came all this way across a bed of burning coals. So you do it.
Part 3: After your normal respiration has resumed, you begin the march back across the embers to your grassy slope, your sprint slightly delayed because your wet feet now have the black shards adhering to them and because all the blood in your body is circulating around the inner 7% of your organs.
I did it once.
We were entertained by two different groups each day. On Saturday there was a group that dominated by Big Momma, a woman of considerable girth and importance. It reminded me so much of beach parks in Hawaii - up comes the tent, the soft drinks, the food, and one after the other, people of indeterminate relation and ethnicity filtered in until there was a huge gathering, babies, kids, teens, lots of tattoos and a whole lot of laughs. I was captivated by a super old man who was petting a tiny puppy someone had place in his lap. He pet it for hours, it seemed like, just staring at it in his lap, petting, petting. Oddly enough there were 3 kids who had mental disabilities. They were loud but cool and endlessly fun to watch.
Sunday we were entertained by a different family, this one seemed to hail from Oregon, as the exhibited Renaissance Festival-ish qualities. Big Momma of this group had pink dreadlocks and resembled a slow-moving clod water oceanic mammal, and she slipped into a slumber in the shade, snoring loudly while the rest of her family dug a 7 foot hole by the water's edge. They all possessed an enormous amount of hair and ink on their skin, alternately playing classical guitar, a small hand accordion, chess for chrissakes, and ate a hearty meal of bagels with an assortment of toppings. They turned out to be super cool, spending all their time together, giving Big Momma her alone time, photographing the pit to China, piling into their old Ford at the end of the day and then driving, somewhat mysteriously, to a shady spot at the far end of the parking lot when we thought they had left.
Sunday, being Father's Day was a delight from start to finish. We got JC a Colorado flag tie-dyed shirt. We had a huge camp breakfast of egg sandwiches (in honor of my dad I had sliced fried hot dogs mixed with scrambled eggs - go on, try it), tons of coffee, orange juice, buckwheat pancakes, maple syrup whipped cream and veggie sausages. Lake time, bike time, lots of sun, short walks to watch the boat ramp fiascos of launchings and hitchings.
We also spent some time torturing Rose's American Girl dolls, pretending Francis was on a date with a cigarette-smoking Ivy while she seductively grills in shrimp kebobs on her tiny plastic hibachi.
Here they are with their new table gazing off our deck up Bear Creek:
So now we have Bluegrass Festival, four days of live music, sun, great food, friends and always a few surprises. I will keep you posted.
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