Camping on the Grand Mesa

View from Atkinson Lake the morning of the 7th.

Me and Zeus "fishing" on Atkinson Lake on the 6th. In my defense it was 50 degrees and the wind was blowing 30 miles per hour.

Renae checking out her balance on a downed tree.

Picture of our campsite on the Grand Mesa.

This past weekend we decided to head up to the Grand Mesa and do a little hiking and camping. It was quite the little adventure with falling snow, blowing wind, and ATV's, but no fish. We were going to head up on Friday but after a stressful day and wind advisories we decided to head up first thing Saturday morning. What a beautiful morning. We got up there around 10 and started figuring where we wanted to camp. This trip we went up the Colbran side of the Mesa, lot less people. We found a good camp spot, although after hiking around, found many many more campsites should we come back. We set up camp and took off for a hike up the road, across an open field of stink weed, and saw lots of wonderful things. Some of the early flowers are in bloom and it was very pretty. We stopped for lunch after 3 miles of hiking and I cooked spaghetti and meatballs. Then we headed back to camp which was two miles back. We took a short nap, although I'm sure Renae would say differently cause I kept waking her up (I was so exhausted I couldn't sleep, so I kept moving around the tent). So we got up and walked over to the lake and went "fishing". I don't think any of the lakes on the Mesa have fish in them this year because this is the third time I've gone and not even one nibble. I was freezing my butt off and Renae kept saying it's not that cold. We went back to camp and tried to start a fire in the fire pit, but it just smoldered with an occasional flame. I cooked on the ole Coleman camp stove and we went to the tent at 630pm. This is the second time we've used the new car camping tent. It is about 1/2 mesh, so on a cold evening with blowing wind it was quite cold. We had the dogs covered up, and all of our clothes on just to keep warm. We both woke up around 1am and had to go to the bathroom and it was like 30 degrees warmer outside than it was when we went to bed. How crazy. We went back to the tent and slept till morning. We tried the fishing thing again but to no avail, although the water was much calmer at 7am. We got back to the tent and packed up and headed into Colbran. Ate some breakfast and had a good time listening to the locals. It's a pretty nice town.