We had our 3rd Annual Labor Day camping trip. It is always hard to find a group campsite to fit everyone. I started looking for sites back in January and found one up the Poudre River. After I had booked it, the campsite owner decided to give the site to another group with more people... but she referred me to her friend across the road who had a site that was only rented to friends and family. That is how I found our site for this year: Rustic 420.
The name was enough to make me a little uneasy, but we booked the entire site including all four cabins so there was no need to worry about strange people joining our group. And since it was wintertime I was not able to go check out the campsite, so I just booked it not knowing anything about the site.
In July we were driving to Steamboat Springs for the 4th of July. We stopped by to check out the site and we were less than impressed. Everything was truly "rustic." But there was no going back now, so we continued planning our trip for the fall.
Fast forward to Labor Day weekend. We drove up Saturday afternoon to get settled into our cabin. The plan was for Luke and Jack to sleep in the truck and the girls and I in the cabin. But we were surprised to find our cabin was pretty big with two rooms and a pull out couch. However, when I pulled out the couch for Jack to sleep on, there were many, many doppings in the bed. So we all ended up cramming into the 2 twin beds.
Soon enough all our friends started showing up. There were many kids running around and having fun
There was even one small cabin dedicated as the "game cabin" with a TV and games. The kids loved playing in here
Sunday morning we all took off for a hike:
We were a pretty big group on the trail
After our hike we were ready to go play in the water. We pumped up Jack's inflatable boat
Our campsite was right next to the river, but getting down there was a bit of a challenge. There was a pretty big, slippery drop off that you had to scale down. We ended up making a human chain to bring all the kids down, and then drop them into the raft and have someone shuttle them across to the other side of the river. It was a long process, but worth it!
We spent the afternoon exploring the river.
Luke and our neighbor Chris even decided to be the first ones to attempt taking the raft down the rapids.
After their successful trip, everyone else wanted to try it! Jack and his buddy had so much fun they even hiked further up the river to make their raft trip longer.
It was probably one of the funnest things I've ever done camping.
Afterwards, we headed back to camp to start dine
Jack was thrilled when his buddy Sam showed up!
Charlene brought some lawn games to play
Josie and her little friend
Monday morning we all packed up to head home.
cleaning up the campsite
We managed to get one big group photo before everyone went home
And our yearly family photo
Instead of going home, several of us decided to make a detour over to Bellaire lake for some fishing
We caught several crawdads
And a few fish
Josie and I went "fishing" for chipmunks (no hook on the line, just a cheese-it)
We got home Monday night and after unloading the car I was reminded of how much I hate camping.
But once I had everything cleaned and put away, I can honestly say that this was a surprisingly fun trip.
