Colorado Cruiser: Mountain Man campout - 3 nights of "Bein' Guys"

The "Mountain Man" campout is run by my friend DaveB. He's run it for 10 years now. It's not one of those Rendezvous that you see on the nature channel where the guys dress in buckskins and throw hatchets. It's just a 4 day campout in the high country of Colorado with a bunch of guys.

He invited me last year, but I had too many other things going on and couldn't make it. So when he invited me this year, I didn't even look at the calendar, I just said "Yes" and drove the money to his house to reserve my spot.

So last Wednesday, I woke up at 4:00 and packed my last few things in the car. I was all set to leave at 4:30 so I'd arrive at the scheduled time of 4:45. All was great until I tried to turn on my Spot GPS. The batteries were dead, so I ran inside and grabbed new batteries. Dang IT! Now I'm going to be 5 minutes late.

I pulled up to Dave's house and sure enough, I was the last arrival. I hate that.

We talked for a few minutes to be sure everyone knew where we were heading and meeting for breakfast, then said a prayer and climbed in the cars.

We meandered our way out of Dave's neighborhood to the freeway, then turned south down I-25 for a few miles to highway 24 and headed into the mountains. As you can imagine, the roads were empty and we were able to Buena Vista (in Colorado it's pronounced Beeuuna) where we stopped for breakfast at Jan's Cafe

We headed West out of town towards Cottonwood Pass which is over 12,000 feet in elevation. It's a nice paved road to the top of the pass, then switches to dirt on the other side. I left before the rest of the group so I could take pictures of them as they drove up. I wound up playing leap frog with a Porsche as I drove up. He'd stop for pictures and I'd pass, then a few minutes later he'd just blow past me, then stop again for another picture. That was a nice car.

I reached the top and only had to wait 5 minutes before I spotted the rest of the group and snapped a few photos. 2 of the group kept going, but the rest stopped for some group pictures by the sign.

The dirt road down the far side was not too bad, but there were a few bad spots here and there from the rains we had this summer. We took the road all the way down to Taylor park where we reached another paved road, but we turned right on the road and the pavement ended after only a few hundred feet. We drove another 17 miles up to our camp site.

We camped a hundred foot south of the road, right beside Bowman Creek. We could hear the creek babbling all through the night and it was wonderful.

As soon as we arrived, we began setting up camp. AndrewF had offered to bring his big (HUGE) tent for several of us to sleep in. He said he had a wood stove in the tent to keep it warm and I was sold. So those of us bunking in the big tent set to work helping to set it up. It was the biggest game of slot A goes in segment B that I'd ever seen. There were about 60 different poles, clamps, joints, pegs, tarps, and assorted pieces that all had to put together in just the right order.

Andrew directed us and soon the whole thing was up and ready.

DaveB and his brother Steve were sleeping in a "Jumping Jack" trailer. It functions somewhat like a popup camp trailer, but instead of having a plastic top, it has a corrugated steel top that can haul a couple of ATV quads on it. It was very cool to see him drive those quads off, then flip the top open to each side and put up a nice tent.

Another friend DaveW set up a seperate tent for himself. And EricF was sleeping in his SUV.

That left 5 of us in Andrew's big tent, SteveH, BlakeB, ChrisV, AndrewF, and of course me.

We spent a while cutting firewood, setting up little luxuries like hammocks.

I spent a while shooting my 54 cal black powder rifle while DaveB cooked some nice fried chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes.

As it got dark we sat around a big fire telling stories and laughing till about 9:00 when everyone slowly filtered off to sleep. The starts were amazingly bright out and we saw quite a few shooting stars before I finally went to bed.

Breakfast at Jan's. Our waitress ChrisV, DaveB, and me.
DaveB was asking for pancakes with an "Insane" amount of butter. He became known as "Butter Boy"