Spring Creek: Spring

 

Spring Creek, Lodi, Wisconsin

 

Blogs are supposed to be fun.  I'm going to switch up the style of this blog a little. Shorter posts with more frequency.   The first day of spring seems like a good time for renewal.  

Callie and I took a long walk from home to town today.  This afternoon, Julia and I played pickleball at the high school.  Nine people showed up; this was the first time masks were not required.  

After a cold morning starting out at 27 degrees, the day has turned beautiful, sunny and near 60.  It's been a long winter, and I can start spending some time on the three season porch. 

Fort Collins: Fermented Paradise and Laundry

This post jumps back to our late spring trip out west.  Leaving the Vedauwoo Recreation area between Laramie and Cheyenne, we backtracked and drove southeast to Fort Collins, Colorado.

We had several reasons for making Fort Collins our destination. First, Julia has an optometry school friend who resides there.  Her husband is a lawyer.    And they both like to hike and drink good beer, so lots of things to talk about after not seeing each other for a number of years. 

Second, after a week without hookups, we needed to resupply, shower, do laundry, dump tanks,  and plan our next journey into the mountains. We checked into Boyd Lake State Park for a two day mid-week stay.  

All of Colorado State Parks are expensive for camping and charge an additional $10 each day for non-residents. At Boyd Lake, sites are tight. Coin showers with out-of-order change machines.  No firewood for sale. On the plus side, the on-site laundry facilities were excellent.  Also, it was very convenient to use as a base for our trips to the mountains to the west, and reservations were available mid-week during June. There wasn't much else available where we could get stuff done.  

 

One thing that we really enjoyed here were the afternoon storms. The sky would be just like the photo above, and then dark clouds would appear from nowhere.  The winds would kick up; the lightning would flash across the sky; and then maybe it would rain a little bit or not.  It was a total tease. 

Then the blue skies would return--just in time for us to go on a brewery tour with friends. Our first stop was Odell Brewery:  excellent beer, very enjoyable outdoor space. 

 After a long winter and spring being mostly cooped up without much social interaction, it felt great to hang out with friends and laugh over beers.

Next stop:  New Belgium Brewery.  I've had their beers before in Wisconsin, but there was a wider selection of draft beers at the brewery.  I tried the Belgium-style Kriek.  Delicious.

One of the ideas discussed that night was a recommendation to hike nearby Horsetooth Rock Trail.  Deanna  and Dan were working the next day and wouldn't be able to join us.  They warned us that the trail could be "snakey" that time of year, so to keep alert.

We didn't see any snakes on the way up, and the trail was beautiful.  We hiked up early in the morning to beat the heat.

 

Julia on a Horse's Tooth

During the hike down, the temperatures started to warm up.  While we were some of the first hikers up, a long line of people were below--just beginning their ascent.  Sleepy heads.  Three young women were hiking towards us about twenty yards away when a HUGE snake slithered quickly between them and then into the tall grass.  The woman closest to the snake  jumped about four feet back and two feet high while shrieking.  It was a big, non-poisonous bull snake and made for a interesting end to the hike.  Two of the women were laughing as we crossed paths.  The one closest to the snake was still a bit shaken.

A week later, we were back at Boyd State Park for more chores before heading into some different mountains for a second week.  This time, we headed to Verboten Brewing in Loveland.  Unlike Odell and New Belgium, Verboten is a small place and the type of brewery that I most enjoy supporting.  Excellent beer and staff that loves to talk about their beer and the community.

Covered outdoor space in front

Beer List

Perfect pour of Stealth Haze

During our resupply, we picked up several Colorado beers which I haven't previously tried. Juicy Bits is made in Greely.  This is my favorite way to enjoy beer. With sandals in a mountain stream.

The next post will be about our week in the national forest near Allenspark, Colorado.

November Update

 

A New Day

It's been awhile.  To be honest, I was on the fence for whether to continue blogging.  The original purpose of this blog was to write about travel, coffee, and beer.  Each of those subjects have taken a back seat in my life for the past six months.  Travel was to be a driving force for our early retirement, but it just hasn't worked out that way yet.

Turning 60 early this year also forced me to take a closer look at how my body was handling alcohol and coffee. An occasional problem with heartburn/acid reflux became more frequent.  I hadn't weighed myself for a long time and was disappointed when I weighed in at 191.

This fall, Julia went on a diet in hopes of losing a few pounds and lowering her cholesterol.  I decided to go on my own individualized diet and exercise program.  I knew that if I quit drinking on weekdays and exercised more, the pounds would come off.  Within a couple of weeks, I dropped to 180, and the heartburn went away.   I'm trying to stabilize at 175-180. 

To make sure that we stay on a healthy track, we are eating less red meat and more chicken, fish and vegetables.  I've found that one cup of coffee per day is just fine for me.  I'm still hiking at least five miles per day.  Julia does boot camp three days per week (getting up  at 4:50 a.m.) and swims the other two days per week.  Twice per week, we play pickleball together in local social leagues.  It's more fun than I thought it would be.

Devil's Lake State Park

 

The second piece of individual exercise for me has been wood harvesting and hand splitting rounds each day. 

Are you done yet?

So, I think the personal funk is over, and I'm ready to start blogging again.  My plan is to first document the rest of our trip out west from early last summer, and then a trip I took  to the Michigan's Upper Peninsula in August. We will see how it goes from there.   There are no trips currently scheduled, due to local commitments with Justin.  

Justin is finishing this semester at UW-Whitewater and then will move to Madison.  I'm proud of Justin for the four years that he spent in Whitewater trying to make college work there, but we've come to the end of the line in trying to make the available resources meet his increasing personal care needs.  

Before Justin started college at Whitewater, there was one personal care agency that met almost all of the disabled students' needs.  They stopped taking new patients just before Justin's first year and then moved completely out of that small market.  None of the remaining agencies filled that gap, focusing on private care for the elderly.  This year, every agency that we contacted  refused Justin due to "staff shortages."  At present, he has only two part time workers who moonlight after full time jobs.  That isn't sustainable, safe or fun for Justin.  He has raised the white flag. 

Julia is doing well.  Travel next year is one of our priorities.  I would like to hike in Scotland or Ireland. Julia has Machu Picchu on her bucket list.  If neither of those work out, there are Scamping opportunities nearby.  We've really enjoyed our short getaways to the banks of the Mississippi River this year.  Julia calls it her "happy place."  We've especially enjoyed the small towns on the Iowa side.  Iowa for natural beauty?  Yep.

July Update

We interrupt your previously scheduled programming to provide a current update.

We've been at home for awhile now since our trip West in the Scamp. About a week after arriving home, there was a  celebration of life for Gene, Julia's Dad, who died in hospice earlier this year.  In many ways, it was lovely; I'm not a big fan of funerals.  

About twenty people gathered for an outdoor fish fry on a Friday afternoon at one of Gene's favorite restaurants on Lake Wisconsin.  Lots of people told stories about their experiences with Gene, and there was a poster board of photos from throughout his life.  

Later, some of his ashes were spread on the water, where Gene loved to fish.  This week, Julia was kayaking on Lake Wisconsin, and a big perch jumped into her kayak.  Coincidence?  She thinks not.  

Allie was home for a week.  I did some hiking with Allie and my niece Anna around Devil's Lake.

Justin is home off and on for the remainder of the summer.  This is always an uncertain time of year for planning, as we try to find caregivers for the fall semester.  There are some complicating factors due to caregivers who have decided to move on from caring for Justin.  On top of that, we've learned that he hadn't done quite as well as he led us to believe in college or his finances/spending.  We're in the process of sorting all of that out, but my planned fall trip west may end up a casualty.  

My small trailer, the Scamp, is back at home after some unexpected repairs.  During the trip west, I noticed slight bulging in a tire’s sidewall, but didn't give it too much thought other than monitoring that it wasn't getting worse (a mistake, but I got lucky).

The tires are a 2 1/2 years old, so I decided that I was going to replace the bulged tire when I got home.   I took it to my favorite and reliable tire shop, Larry's Tires.  After jacking up the tire in question, the technician discovered a wobbly wheel and then a bad bearing.  That did not make me happy as the bearings were repacked by a local rv shop just prior to the trip west.  Apparently, during servicing, there is a nut that gets tightened and then slightly backed off.  The technician believed that the nut either never got tightened or got backed off way too much.  There was a flat spot on the bearing.

A new bearing was installed on the bad tire side and the other side was inspected and repacked just to make sure. The tire bulged due to heat from the bearing going bad. He said that I was very lucky that the wheel hadn't fallen off during the trip.  The diagnosis and repair was reasonable, and I know where I'll be taking the bearings for service next time (Larry's Tires).  I will not be back to the RV shop.  I thought about complaining, but life is too short, and I wouldn't trust them again anyway. 

Vedauwoo and Beyond: Trails and Camp Food

We stayed at Vedauwoo in Wyoming longer than anywhere else on this trip west. Most days, we never even started up the truck.  There were plenty of hiking trails nearby, and we were well stocked with food and drink to prepare at the campsite.  

One of our favorite hikes was about a half mile walk down the road from Site #13 and left from the parking lot where the vault toilet was conveniently located.  It was set up as a horse trail with hitching rails nearby, but we didn't see any horses that week in early June. 

It was a wide, easy to follow in and out trail.

Most of the time.

 

Hiking early in the day, we rarely saw other people or dogs, which is my favorite kind of hiking.

Not far from Vedauwoo is the Pole Mountain section of the Medicine Bow National Forest.  We checked this area out for future dispersed camping opportunities.  There were campgrounds here, but they were not yet open for the season in early June.   Why you might ask?  The elevation was higher. And there was snow.

We did some hiking here, and the terrain was much more wooded than Vedauwoo.

We treated ourselves that night to a delicious dinner and a bottle of wine from our friends in Blue Earth.  They made us promise to drink it in a fabulous place, and our Scamp campsite at Vedauwoo definitely qualified. 

Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Wyoming

 

When I started researching Vedauwoo during the planning of this trip, I was pretty sure that I was going to like it.  The area checked lots of my boxes.  High elevation, free camping, thirty minutes from a college town (Laramie), trails, and interesting rocks.  

This area is closed to campers (with gates across the road) until about June 1st each year.  We drove in from Nebraska on June 2nd. Vedauwoo is literally right off of Interstate 80 between Cheyenne and Laramie.  The closest "town" is Buford (population 1).  Verizon cell phone service was iffy but could be improved to two bars by climbing a nearby rock formation. 

Pronounced Vee-da-voo, the area is popular among rock climbers and off road vehicle enthusiasts.  Rock climbing is a silent sport and doesn't bother me a bit, although I have no urge to do technical climbing.  Off-road vehicles don't bother me a bit until someone turns the key.  Then the noise and dust can be quite annoying.  Thankfully, most of the time that we were here, the dust and noise were minimal.  As the weekend approached, the noise and dust increased but only near the road. There was one younger boy that drove up and down the road from sunrise to sunset, back and forth, back and forth.  We tried to stay far away from the road when things got dusty and noisy.

Dispersed camping is different here from other places that I've been.  You must camp in assigned spots, which are numbered.  That might seem  like a negative, but it didn't turn out that way.  The numbered campsites are extremely well-spaced, and there's got to be at least a hundred of them.  The system actually worked well to keep people from bunching up too close together.  The spot we finally settled in (lucky 13) was a couple of hundred yards from the next nearest camper.  

Back yard

Side yard

 

Front yard

There is a pay campground here also, but the sites are much tighter together, and there is no good reason to stay there.  All water must be brought in, although there is a spigot at a rest area on the way to Laramie.  There was also a vault toilet about a ten minute walk from our campsite.  It was kept clean and well-stocked by U.S. Department of Agriculture employees.

What's to love about this place?  For me it was the rock formations. As mentioned before, I'm not a technical climber, but there are so many rock formations to play around in.  It really made me feel like a little kid to run around in and on top of the rocks.  Pure joy!

The elevation was over 8000 feet at our camp, so we enjoyed warm days (70's) and cool nights (40's).  After each day of exploring, we had plenty of time for food and drink.  We stayed six days.

We made a few side trips to visit Laramie and Cheyenne and also did some hiking in the Pole Mountain area.  Those will be the subject of a separate post.