We were up with the sunrise since our windows were open on this hot night camped in Colorado. We stayed comfortable overnight with our battery-powered fans and a breeze. But we certainly weren’t expecting 100-degree weather in the mountains in a no hook-up camp site! It was cool by morning, so we headed out on a hike down Hewlett Gulch. With no cell phone signal, we couldn’t download the all-trails app information like we usually do. We certainly have become dependent on our phones to provide directions to the trail head and directions for the trail! If we hadn’t done some research a couple days ago, we wouldn’t know what hikes were available in this neighborhood. We're living like pioneers!
Mark took a sun-rise picture at 6:00, as the sun was peeking over the canyon wall in our campground.
We ate a fast breakfast, and were on the trail by 7:10. We were glad to have the tall walls of the gulch providing shade for the first couple miles.
Doesn't Mark look good in his new backpack? That was a Father's Day present, and he plans to put lots of miles on it during this trip.
This is what we call a “lollipop trail.” That means that we first hike the “stick” of the lollipop, and then hike the loop at the top. That kind of looks like a lollipop, right? Then we'll have to hike back down the stick to get back to the pickup. According to the map at the trailhead (with the dotted black lines outlining the hike), this is what the Hewlett Gulch hike looks like:
The “stick” is three miles long and is flat and easy as we go down the gulch formed by Hewlett Creek. We were grateful for the log bridges the US Forest Service laid over the creek crossings to keep our feet dry.
We saw that the bridges were numbered with an insignia of the forest service.
We also saw that many of the bridges weren’t needed now, as the creek was dry most of the way. It looked like northern Colorado was in a bit of a drought. When the creek was dry, the logs made for a nice bench to rest on.
Things got rockier, and sunnier, as we headed uphill once we got to the sucker head of this lollipop. We started gaining elevation on switchbacks with different views. We commented that these views looked more like cow pastures than mountains.
We were glad for some cloud cover, as this hike could be really hot in July. We saw record-breaking heat yesterday, and today’s high is predicted in the 80’s. We’re only at 6,000 feet in elevation, so it gets hot on this eastern end of Highway 14, known as the Cache de Poudre River.
We would have had some shade, but a fire swept through this gulch in 2012. The grass and wildflowers have bounced back nicely, and Denisa kept busy taking wildflower pictures.
The charred trees were still standing, and we didn’t see any evidence that new young trees were going to take their place.
That lollipop top hike was more challenging, and longer than we had expected. If we had more information on this hike, we might not have chosen it as our first hike of this trip.
When we got back to our pickup, Mark’s phone recorded that we had been hiking for 3.5 hours, and we went 8.7 miles with 2,323 feet in elevation gain. That would be a challenging hike for seasoned hikers, and we feel like a couple of newbies right now. Now that we had our exercise for the day, it was time to relax in our backyard river. Just a few steps from our trailer, we can sit in the rushing water of the Poudre River to get cool, just like the pioneers.
When we needed more water in the trailer, this forest service campground had it available from the community pump. We just have to pump and carry it in a bucket--just like pioneers.
Then we realized that we weren’t prepared with a system to get that water into our RV tank. So we manufactured a funnel out of a water bottle and a piece of hose. It wasn’t perfectly efficient, but it got the job done.
We don’t have a phone signal here, but Mark remembered that AT&T added satellite texting to our phone plan recently. We thought we should practice in case we need to make emergency contact while we were in remote areas like this.
So we learned how to track and then tie to passing communication satellites. The phone app helped to first locate a satellite by giving you messages like "turn to the left" or "satellite is low in the sky." Once you lock onto a satellite, it tells you to keep pointing your phone that direction, and you can see a picture of you (the green dot on earth) linking to the satellite overhead. We successfully sent several text messages. That was pretty interesting technology! Okay, so maybe the pioneers didn't have that technology to help them communicate.
We also don’t have any television signal, so we found other sources of entertainment just like the pioneers. Just like a television set, the Poudre River brings paddlers right to our backyard. We watched as one boatload regrouped after tipping over in the rapids.
Then they headed back through the next set of riffles.
We watched as more than a dozen rafts passed by, waving to the old couple sitting in the water.
It looks like the paddling companies pass Stove Prairie Campground around 2:00 most afternoons. Many companies start their floats just a mile up-river from us, as they make their way through the class II to class IV rapids of the Poudre River.
This is the only National Scenic River in Colorado. Even though the water level seems low with lots of rocks showing, we saw that many travelers were still floating it in July.
We also saw kayakers heading down the river. We knew that this was more rapids than we could handle, so we didn’t even consider inflating our kayak. This was further confirmed as we watched these experts doing some difficult maneuvers when they got caught in the powerful current near the boulder closest to our camp site.
When we tired of the "water sports channel" on our pioneer television, we switched channels. Our other source of entertainment was the milkweed plants behind our trailer. Imagine this as our television set, as we stared at it much like we do the TV in our living room. The first channel available on Milkweed TV shows the normal programming—a monarch butterfly. We knew that people are encouraged to plant milkweed for these migrating orange butterflies. We found that the picture was a little fuzzy on this channel, as the monarchs flitted away without posing for long.
While trying to take a picture of the monarch butterfly on the flowers, we accidentally changed channels on our “television.” We were surprised that a hummingbird flew right in to get a sip of nectar too.
We found that if we stood very still about a foot way from the plants, the hummingbirds would occasionally return.
We tried different camera settings, trying to slow down those tiny wings. But they were usually a blur. What great nature channels we have available in this remote campground!
Denisa had already taken pictures yesterday of the yellow swallowtail butterflies. They were easiest to photograph since they were calmer and like to sit and sip the nectar. Today we flipped to a new channel and noticed one of those beautiful yellow butterflies hanging from the bottom of one of the milkweed leaves.
Of course we tried to take pictures, and it looked like we were witnessing a National Geographic moment. It looked like this butterfly was laying a giant white egg on the underside of that leaf.
We would have googled this amazing event if we just had a phone signal! We took more pictures, as the butterfly didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. That’s when this family show of new beginnings changed to a sinister drama.
Only by looking at the close-ups of our pictures, we discovered that the big white egg—had legs! What?!? Later we found out that this was a crab spider. They don't spin webs, and can change color to match different flowers to catch unsuspecting prey. The crab spider had caught the butterfly, and was now eating it. What we thought was a happy channel about a mother laying eggs for a new generation of beautiful butterflies, suddenly became a horrific tale of murder and intrigue. These channels can change quickly!
We switched channels again to take a picture of one of the many bumblebees in flight around the milkweed blooms that look like 4th of July fireworks.
We made one more channel change to find an unusual red bee among the blooms. We must say that our milkweed television has more interesting programming than the 43 channels available in our living room TV back home.
We fixed a nice meal this afternoon, and discovered that our solar panels can provide enough electricity to power our electric induction plate. We assumed we would be cooking only on our gas stove, but now we know that we have electric cooking options too. Even with cloudy weather, our solar panels cranked out 70 amp hours today, keeping us at 100% battery charge. We were learning that while camped without any shade, we can run the inverter to power the induction plate to cook a meal, occasionally use the water pump, and run the roof fan to keep a breeze inside. Maybe we have some new-fangled electric gizmos that the pioneers didn't have.
Even though the sun was fueling our solar power, we were glad when it got cooler when the sun set in the west. Our lights are very efficient LEDs, but we didn't want to use our battery power to light up the inside of the trailer after dark. Besides, our outdoor "television" was finished for the evening. So just like pioneers, we went to sleep when it got dark. It's fun living like pioneers!
