February Camping Trip

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As I mentioned in previous posts I made a goal for 2024 to camp at least one night a month every month of 2024.

I decided to head up to Cache La Poudre Wilderness this past weekend. It is in the northern part of the state and is an area I don’t know well and have wanted to explore for quite awhile. I was honestly shocked at how beautiful it was. It is a gorgeous little section of the Colorado.

This trip ended up being a solo one. I have been wanting to solo camp for awhile so I was incredibly excited. It was exactly what I needed. It was slow and peaceful and I was able to spend time in my thoughts and take my time taking pictures since nobody was waiting on me. I honestly can’t wait to go again.

I made a little video of the trip that you can see above. It is simple but it tells the story of the trip. Below is a myriad of pictures, including some that didn’t make the video.

Let’s go camping!

Janurary Monochrome

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I always struggle shooting in January and February. It is always so cold and dark and drab. This year I decided to embrace it a little bit and shoot a ton of monochrome…in fact I only shot monochrome on my X-pro3. It was a really fun exercise and it made me really appreciate shooting in black and white. For everyday family and around the house snapshots (like most of these are) it really works great. It feels timeless and makes it easier to shoot in weird lighting situations.

On another note I am actually going to sell my X-Pro3. I REALLY love the combo of it and the Voigtlander 23mm, but I am having a werid issue with my right eye and manual focusing on the rangefinder style body is really only doable with my right eye. I am sad to see it go but I ordered a Nikon ZF to replace it and I am really excited to give it a go. This month of black and white turned out to be a fun send-off for this camera.

January Camping Trip

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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!