I made a goal to camp at least one night of every month of 2024. Janruary is in the books! Overall it was actually a huge success. All of my gear worked like it was supposed to and worked well. We learned a couple of things, but overall it went smooth which is awesome and a good start to the year.
We got on the road from Charlies house at about 3. We forgot a couple of things so we had to stop at a King Soopers on the way down. We arrived at out intended camp site close to 4:30. Unfortunately it was closed so we had to start looking around. We drove past several designated ones along the South Platte that were ok, but they were $23 a night and paved and just not exactly what we were looking for. After asking for some advice from one of the camp hosts, we finally found some dispersed camping about 15mins away. It was actually very near where we stayed at that Hip-Camp with the family back in the Spring.
The area was nice and fairly secluded...though kinda close to the main road. Setup went great and it was easy to cook. I didn’t really forget anything major.
I set up the annex and it worked great actually! It gave us a nice warm area to change and and store stuff and we actually setup the heater in the annex and it never even got that cold in there. It was nice and warm.
We cooked some steak and veggies for dinner, drank a couple of beers, and enjoyed the fire until about 9pm.
Overall I didn’t sleep great. We shared a sleeping bag which was tough for me and the mattress wasn’t that comfortable. I will get used it.
Around 11pm though these dudes rolled in not too far from us and were kinda loud, and about the same time we started hearing what sounded like a coyote barking like crazy. I walked out to talk to them and they were a little odd. They said they lived in the area for a while after their house burned down until the forrest service kicked them out. Now they were back hunting for brass casings to turn in for money. Overall they were probably harmless but they seemed a little bit sketchy to me. I went back to bed and the barking continued on for over an hour. It was overall a weird experience and led to me not getting the best sleep overall.
The morning was nice though. I got some pictures and we made some coffee and some breakfast tacos that Charlie had pre-made. Morning is some of the best part of camping.
Tear-down was fairly fast so we set off down a nearby road and marked a bunch of good camping spots to come back to later.
Overall it was a good first trip and I am encouraged, despite the somewhat frustrating night. I am actually going again on February 2nd, this time by myself so that should be awesome!