Painting, Camping Trip

Last week, Ashley and I finally got going on a project that we've been talking about even before I left last year. After Mike moved out last weekend, his bedroom was left empty, so it was perfect timing to empty our bedroom too and throw some paint on the walls. Ashley's mother loves to paint her rental property's interiors completely in ultra-pure gloss white, and it has been bugging Ashley for a long time. She says it's depressing to be around so much white. We've fixed that situation, painting our bedroom in green tones, and our new guest room in shades of red. It came out really well! We finished most of the painting in one day, which amazed me. The next day, Ashley shampooed the carpets in both rooms, so they're both nice and fresh.

After all of that hard work, it was a little hard to get motivated for the camping trip, but we managed to get packed and drive up on Friday afternoon. We camped at the Cold Springs Campground in Roosevelt National Park, just outside of Black Hawk. The site was beautiful and well developed. We were on two of the only pads without electrical, which I preferred. If you're going camping to commune with nature, why would you want electrical hookups? We set up a tent for Ashley and myself, and one for Chris and Holly, who were coming up much later, after dark. Kelly and Will arrived not long after Ashley and I, and set up their own tent. We spent Friday evening getting a fire going, cooking shish kabobs over the fire grate (with only some success), and talking. It was perfect.

In the morning, I got up early to get the fire started and cook breakfast on the propane stove. After breakfast, I suggested we all go geocaching, which the other two couples hadn't done before. We had an excellent little hike in the forest behind the campground, and were able to find The Tommyknocker's Cache. The other couples had a lot of fun and were gung-ho to find another cache, but on the hike back to the campground we had a little rain and decided to wait for later. After a lunch of Ashley's white chili, we split for a bit. Kelly and Will wanted to hop down to Black Hawk for a couple of hours to gamble a bit. The rest of us drove to an Idaho Springs laundromat to try and dry Ashley's sleeping bag out. She had been very cold during the night, and was convinced that her sleeping bag was damp. We ended up finding a motel office with the only laundromat/tanning salon I've ever seen. After that, we also drove to the Walmart in Evergreen and bought her a better sleeping bag, just in case hers was just not capable of keeping her warm. In the evening, Ashley cooked up tacos, and again we enjoyed the campfire and the company.

On Sunday morning, Holly made a breakfast of oatmeal and flavored granola, which was really good. After the day started to warm up, we struck camp. The group was eager to look for another geocache, so on the way home, we stopped and found the Dory Hill Cemetery cache. It was a beautiful cemetery, very natural, with overgrown grass and aspen trees. There were many new-looking headstones, but many of them were dated quite old, as far back as the 1860's. After that, we parted ways and headed home. We've all agreed to do similar trips with each other at least yearly. We had a ton of fun, and I'm really glad Kelly suggested it!