Tent Camping Adventure

I haven't been tent camping since I spent a week on Assateague Island with my cultural anthropology class in college.  Jordan has been bugging me to camp up in the mountains with him for years now, and I finally agreed after a desperate 8:30pm Monday evening plea.  The kids are at an adventure camp this week, so we were flexible.  As soon as Jordan finished work on Tuesday afternoon, we packed up the truck for the 90 minute drive.  One 3 mile hike later, we were at camp. 

 

 

Along the way we had the most incredible encounter with a large herd of elk who were resting in a meadow along our path.  It was an amazing experience to watch these majestic creatures at such a short range.

We had to skirt the meadow to get to camp, and eventually the elk caught sight of us and moved on.  We got to our spot next to Willow Creek shortly before sunset and the weather.  Luckily, the majority of the storm system passed us by.

 

After a fairly restless night, Jordan and I got up early to do some hiking in this amazingly beautiful place.

During our walk we came across some old camps, one of which had this for a sitting log.

To our immense pleasure we crossed paths with another group of over 300 elk on our hike out.  Several cow elk brought up the rear herding a bunch of calves along.  The moms and babies were bugling back and forth, which made for a sound that we'll not soon forget!

While I'm fairly certain that I'll never want to go camping every weekend, I'd be willing to give it a try if the trips were even remotely half as adventurous as this one !