Aspen Ridge Campground -- South Fork, Colorado

We settled into our new home base at Aspen Ridge Campground on the north side of South Fork.  With reservations for 8 days, our next door neighbor suggested that we should stay for 8 weeks.  Everyone is so friendly here, and we are enjoying the activities and fellowship so much that we have now extended our reservation for 3 weeks!

We didn't take pictures at all the activities, but so far we have gone to the live music sing-along on Sunday evening, and the Wednesday night concert and finger food pot luck.  We also went to the Wednesday morning "Cowboy Breakfast" and Denisa did take pictures of the cowboys cooking up eggs outside in huge cast iron skillets.

We have also found that many of our neighbors go to the same church we attended on Sunday morning.  It's an easy walk to church, and many Sundays the guys at Aspen Ridge host a sausage and pancake breakfast right after services.

Bill and Joann, our next door neighbors, invited us to go with them on a field trip to Amish country south of the town of Monte Vista.  Bill knew all the country roads to drive to bring us to Bontrager's Variety Store--the Walmart of the Amish.  

We don't shop much because of our limited space, but Denisa did find a camp fire pie iron.  You put pie filling (and perhaps some cream cheese too) between two slices of bread and clamp the two cast iron sides together to form it into a pie.  Denisa can hardly wait to find a camp fire so she can toast a pie or two!

The next stop was the Amish grocery store.  Again it was down a gravel road, right next to the corral and across the drive from the house.  There was a pony and cart parked outside.  We obviously found plenty of things to buy here!

It was filled with bulk items and spices of every kind.  But Denisa's favorite sections were the drastically reduced grocery items.  They had one-of-a-kind,  dented, and slightly out-of-date items for a fraction of the price you would pay at Safeway.  Here's a sampling of our purchases.

But the most fun purchases were the dented cans with no labels--all priced at ten cents.  We bought several cans each, and vowed to eat whatever was in our mystery cans for supper that night. Our first can was corn, and our second (huge) can was tomatoes--both of those have potential.  

But our third can was spinach, and you'll notice it isn't in the picture.  We have fresh spinach in our refrigerator all the time, and use it on a daily basis.  But canned spinach is one of the few things both of us can't stand to eat.  We were glad to hear that Bill liked canned spinach, and it went nicely with the canned sweet potatoes and diced tomatoes they were having for supper.  Denisa cooked up a potato, added some leftover pulled pork and seasoning, and we had a tasty 20 cent soup.  There was also a side of granola bar we bought for less than ten cents each.

We even had enough tomatoes to make home made spaghetti sauce the next day. What a fun shopping day!  Thanks Bill and Joann for taking us shopping.  We can only hope next time the Amish bakery will be open too.