For the first time, we woke to find the clouds of yesterday’s storms were lingering for the morning. It meant a colder start than we were used to but we were happy to find it meant the bugs weren’t out. I’d had a terrible night, plagued by itchy bites so much that when I couldn’t stand the irritation, I started listening to an audiobook, “The Naturalist”, a book about Theodore Roosevelt and his passion for the wilderness. The distraction was my only saviour that got me through the night. All the while, Dan and Cleo had slept soundly.
Feeling the need to run water over my itchy body, I elected to take a much needed shower in the creek. I knew it was bloody freezing but I was determined to get clean since I could still feel the layer of sweat on me from the ride yesterday. I found a small sunny spot in the shallow running river and put soap all over and scrubbed. The cold wasn’t too bad, but when I rinsed my hair it gave me a brain freeze! I felt fully refreshed and clean as I walked back to camp with a triumphant look on my face to satisfy the boys.
As I made egg and bacon bagels for breakfast, Dan did some surgery on his big toe. It had gotten infected for no reason a few days ago and it was looking so bad that he was attacking it with a salt water bath and hydrogen peroxide on the advice of his mother. While cooking breakfast, I managed to create a two foot flame when I absent-mindedly propped up my stove with a gas lighter. Obviously it caught on fire and flame didn’t subside. Dan watched the whole thing from his car, laughing, watching me as I couldn’t decide how to deal with the problem. Eventually I managed to flick the lighter away and everything was under control. Didn’t even drop any food! Just a few marks on the kitchen bench to remind me.
Over breakfast, we made plans to head into Gunnison to do laundry before heading east towards Pikes Peak. Just as the bugs started to come out, we broke camp with Anthony leading the way. We passed plenty of riders out early to hit the trails as we left the snowy mountains of Crested Butte behind us.
Half an hour later, we were in Gunnison and Anthony took us to the local Recreation Centre. He hadn’t been keen for the creek shower but was also in need of one and this was his solution. Since I was already clean, as Dan and Anthony walked towards the centre, towels in hand, I went across the road to the Walmart to stock up on some groceries. It wasn’t a big one so didn’t have any fresh produce, so I bought big on canned food. When I was done, I went back over to the rec centre and got Cleo out of Dan’s car to keep me company as I sat on the grass in the carpark. The boys were out shortly after, fresh from their hot showers and we were off to find a Laundromat.
The Laundromat was right next to a car wash so while our washing was on, we took advantage of the spigot outside of it to fill up all of our water. I was doing constant applications of itch cream to stop every inch of my body from hurting and when I needed further distraction to make it work, Dan and I started throwing the Frisbee around the carpark while Anthony blogged.
We were all hungry for lunch by the time everything was dried and folded so we drove towards Subway for a bite. I stopped at a Napa Auto Parts store on the way to return the $30 inverter I’d bought because it made too much noise for my liking and my existing inverter seemed to be working fine, even after the stress of the Baja trip. No issues there, I met the boys at Subway just as they got to the front of the big line. We scoffed our sandwiches down then hit the road again after filling up.
Anthony lead the way as we drove east through Colorado. The storms seemed to be following us, or us following them because the sky was dark most of the way. When we stopped at a servo near halfway for a break, when I got a couple of beers out of the fridge for Dan, I noticed it wasn’t turned on. What? My battery had plenty of power but no fridge. I pulled on the wires a bit and found that the ground cable had come loose from the regulator so I thought that was my problem. When I plugged the fridge into AC power it worked fine so it seemed that was my issue. I kept the fridge plugged into the inverter and figured I’d fix it at camp. Everything seems to keep breaking!
The next hour of driving or so was beautiful but the skies remained grey. When we drove into Woodland Park, Pikes Peak was only twenty minutes away. We’d been able to see the peak from the road for a while now and it was clear so we were on for a view at the top. When I noticed it was 5pm and they closed the gates at 8pm, I wondered if we’d be rushing the experience. I messaged Anthony and he pulled over so we could have a conference. We were all tired from the drive and decided we weren’t really up for driving up the peak in our state so we made a quick decision to go to a nearby free camp. I lead the way to a Safeway for a quick stock up on groceries before we head back north on the highway until we reached Pike National Forest.
After a quick search along a dirt road, we found a sweet camp in a pullout that had plenty of room for the three of us. There was even a small pile of firewood by the fire ring. Dan and I collected some more wood while Anthony set his tent up. For the second time, as soon as he finished setting up the tent, the rain started falling. We umm’ed and arr’ed a while before deciding it would be worth putting the tarp up again. It turned out to be instrumental for us having a comfortable night because the rain kept coming down steadily. Anthony thankfully got the fire started in good time so it weathered the rain and kept going.
I cooked a dinner of sausage pasta for us while Anthony had chicken, onion and peppers cooked on his two-burner gas stove. Some time after we were done with dinner, the boys settled into their smoking routine and the rain stopped enough for us to sit by the fire.
Anthony did a bit of blogging by the fire as I read through the free papers I’d picked up at the supermarket. They were in the fire before too long. After a desert of hot chocolate, we all retired to our sleeping quarters for another night in the forest.