8/28/2022 Crested Butte, Lake Irwin CO

 Sunday, 8/28/2022

Had to throw on an extra blanket last night!  34 Degrees when we wake this morning and watch the sun slowly rise, illuminating the dark mountainside across from us, showing a dense carpet of evergreens.  What a jigsaw puzzle this would make!

We’ve read that Crested Butte has a downtown Farmer’s market on Sunday mornings, so after a hearty breakfast of sausage and egg breakfast tacos and oranges, we go there.  Crested Butte is obviously an “artsy” kind of town, with organic foods, galleries and such.  The market has local produce (we’ve seen several greenhouses in the area), jewelry, hand made clothing, soaps, etc.  A huge bakery tent and the bagel shop have lines, but since we had a big breakfast we pass.

Some old 1800's buildings are scattered around town.

We made a video for Bryan and family, since we often see them on Sunday. Julie says Henry wanted to watch it again and again.

We take Route 12 to Kebler Pass and stop at Lake Irwin Campground.  We stayed here once before and although the website a week ago showed fully booked, we find quite a few sites available today.  The camp hosts says he’s had quite a few cancellations - perhaps because they've had a good bit of rain lately??   We choose site #21 and decide to spend the day here as well as tonight. The host comes round to collect fees (a whole $5) and is quite chatty.  He is from Texas as well and spends the Summers up here being camp host.  All hosts get free camping spots of course, and some get an additional payment - depends on the entity (National Park, State Park, Fish & Wildlife, BLM, etc.) and how much work is involved. 

We walk around Lake Irwin where there are people fishing and kayaking and see others taking off on horseback (and mountain bike).

Lots of speedy chipmunks.

And many types of fungi near the pond, which is behind our campsite.  The pond is a great reflector, especially first thing in the morning when everything is still.  I go check on it every couple of hours as the wind and light shift.

morning

afternoon

Greg collects and splits some wood for a campfire.  We can tell we are at high elevation when exerting ourselves.  Greg says at least his cardiologist would approve.  We see  one lady kayaking with her dog, who looks so cute in his own life jacket!

We are making a quick lunch when some rain arrives.  So after lunch we wash hair and do a little inside maintenance.  The rain stops and we try to explore some surrounding roads - some very rough.  There are other campsites but we’re not sure what established campground they belong to.  Very primitive.

  

Dinner tonight is great.  Greg gets a fire going a little early so that we can use the coals to cook silver turtles - potatoes and onions wrapped in foil packets.  These go with the small bacon-wrapped steaks and zucchini that Greg grills.  Yum!  

As we are cleaning up, the rain returns, so we spend the evening reading, writing and working on pictures on the computer.  We charge the computer (and phones, batteries, hearing aids, ipad) while driving around, so usually have enough “juice”for the evening.  Unfortunately we have no signal here, so we miss the Johnson family zoom call that takes place every Sunday.  We are finding signal more and more places, but there are still those "remote" or mountainous spots that it just can't reach!

Nice cool evening and the rain doesn’t last very long.  I look out the window during the night and am amazed at the plethora of stars!  Wow.  I've got to learn night photography, though I'm usually fast asleep.