Mountain Park 2nd Night

Tuesday August 4, 2015              Day 7                   Mountain Park N.F.C.G., site 42     2^nd night

It’s been a week on the road now and 5 more weeks to go.  It seems we did a lot in a week.  We haven’t had a bad time yet.  The only moment of concern and disappointment was the engine starting crisis on day 2 because of the canister purge valve issue.  It hasn’t cropped up since and the CHECK ENGINE symbol has not come on since we’ve reached the Rockies.  My truck likes elevation.  I get better gas mileage at elevation, too.  

The camp site we have at Mountain Park campground is one of the best we have ever stayed at.  I can say the same for the campground and people who camp there.  It is right on the beautiful Cache la Poudre River.  (we found out today, it is pronounced pooder.  go figure).

We had coffee and a fire, as is the Ed and Marsha camping tradition.  And on non-drive travel days, it’s spiked with Carolin’s Irish Crème.  We are at 6500 ft. or thereabouts, so the mornings are low 50’s and a fire with the morning coffee is nice.  There is always a morning coffee, but not always a morning fire. 

 

Part way through the morning fire, Marsha went into the trailer and came out with her cast iron skillet, some bacon, and some eggs and told me to put another log on the fire.  Boy, we have fun camping.

 

The closest “town” is Rustic, eight miles west.  We needed a bag of ice and wanted to find a cell signal somewhere, so we took a ride there.  On the way, we turned off a road called Pingree Park Road to see the burnt out fire region of a 2013 fire we heard about.  It was a typical mountain unpaved road going up switchbacks and offering good views over the non-guard rail turnoffs.  We came to an intersection and one way pointed to Jack’s Gulch National Forest Campground and we decided to go look at it.  What a beautiful campground it was, way in the middle of nowhere, up a mountain.  It even had electric sites and there were some RV’s camping up there.  It was so nice we decided to spend tomorrow night up there after we check out of Mountain Park.

This road was one of many roads passing through free range areas. 

You have to look out for cows on the road.

Came back down and continued our journey through the Poudre Canyon to Rustic, where there was a general store.  We also had 1 bar on the cell phone until I turned on the booster and we then had 3 bars with 3G data).  We’ve been contacting Oliver about an issue with our LED lights over the kitchen and dinette failing.  Being out of internet and cell phone coverage for a few days is difficult in today’s world.  Oliver would send us replacements if we hung out somewhere for a few days, but we told them to send them to our house.  They had a bad batch and will pay to have them replaced.

There was a resort in Rustic that operated a General Store with tourist stuff, groceries, ice, propane, and fishing stuff.  We bought some ice and some trout flies.
Next we continued west so I could case out some fishing spots.  We drove about 8 more miles to a fish hatchery and turned around.  My Colorado Flyfishing book talks about fishing below the fish hatchery and it looked like a good spot.  There also is a lot of turnoffs all the way back to the campground that access the river.  I went back to the campground to drop off Marsha and then went back up the road to fish.  Every turnoff had one or two cars and I started thinking the really good spot is going to be too crowded, as cars were arriving when we left.  So I took the first unoccupied turnoff I found and fished there for about 2 hours.  No luck.  It is a very difficult river to fish and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t raise any.  I was outdone by this river.  I usually do well in western rivers, but this one got me.

Here's where I fished this afternoon:

Got back from fishing at 4:00.  It was pizza night.  Pizza! Camping?  How do you do that?  We use this flatbread called Flatout Flatbread Pizza.  We get it at the Meijer’s deli counter.  I heat it up on the grill, just a little.  Then we use pizza sauce, turkey pepperoni (tastes just like real pepperoni without the calories and fat), onion, green pepper, mushrooms, and shredded mozzarella cheese.  Then “bake” it in the Weber Q until the cheese melts and the flatbread is crisp and viola.  Thin crust pizza.  Homemade.  While camping.

While it was cooking, a couple from Iowa came by to admire our trailer.  They have a 1995 25 ft. Holiday Rambler Alumalite and want to replace it.  They been looking for 5 years and they haven’t found anything they liked . . . until they saw ours.  While we were giving them the grand tour, four women (two couples) showed up and also wanted a tour.  We spent the next hour showing our trailer and all its features to six very enthusiastic people.  We gave them all brochures and web information and our names.  If they buy one, we get $200 for showing it.

We had an evening campfire, and went to bed after putting everything away for the evening.

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