Cabin Camping in Cripple Creek

Wolf, Led, and I decided to go camping this weekend, so we looked online at campgrounds. No close tent sites had open reservations, so we started checking out cabins at KOAs. We found one campground near Cripple Creek, about an hour west of the Springs. It's the highest campground in the world!*

We shoved all our things into the car and drive south. We were going to meet Jam in Manitou Springs, hang out with her for the night at the site, but she called it off, as she was feeling mega sick. So, on we drove through the night, along the bendy, narrow roads, until we saw among the darkness, a small grove of lights on the hillside in the distance. It was our site. We arrived plenty late, and our cabin was the most secluded of them all. It was fenced off the rest of the site and was next to the storage containers that the campground used for lawnmowers and such, but it was good. We began to unpack our things from the car.

Wolf brought his mega-noculars and set it up on its tripod.  He adjusted the lenses and focus until he could see the moon, its craters and maria, clear and neat. Earth's moon is quite beautiful, truth. Led and I went up to the forest edge and peered into the darkness. We made our beds got comfy, and told toast stories. Led is mega easy to scare, and I kinda feel bad at how much we scared him. But it was amusing! My story of the Sempiternal Silhouette was kinda weird, but I like the antagonist enough to want to draw concept sketches of him. Wolf had a timer set on his phone to play some creepy demonic chanting childish hell-voice in the middle of the night. That was freaky, for sure. I kinda wonder how things would have played out if he set it to the young children who say, "Mommy? I'm scared. I'm scared, Daddy." just out of the blue, in the middle of the night. We talked a lot about Wolf's idea for a new LARP, and I'm excited for this much. I am stoked about setting up an in-game, country-wide postal system, for sure, and I think it will be great to play around in one of Wolf's worlds. At something like 4: in the morning, I heard Led and Wolf talking and getting out of bed, heard something about stars, and so I got out of bed, donned my pants and hoody, and went outside. The sky was amazing and bright. Not so bright that the Milky Way was just a cloud of light in the sky, illuminating the otherwise pitch black of the world. Not that bright, but still plenty breathtaking. The celestial sphere had turned from where I had learned a good chunk of the constellations, so I was a little bit lost. Vega was no longer above me. Everythings were sideways. Shooting stars streaked across the sky. Eventually, clouds rolled across the ceiling, and we went inside and crashed again.

The next day, we drove looking for breakfast in Cripple Creek, but there was a huge bike rally in town for the weekend, and the streets were packed. Instead, we found our way to another, smaller town, and had lunch there. At a small dollar store, we picked up water guns. We went back to the campground and showered. The facilities were nice, to be sure. Led and I loaded up the water guns and went again to the forest's edge, this time intent on finding a trail. We were armed and ready for anything. We sprayed a giant anthill at the edge of the forest, then went back to camp to drop off the empty guns, then back to the forest to hike. We went up the slope toward Trachyte Knob for quite a ways, getting maybe two-thirds of the way up before heading back before the sun set. The view from almost-the-top was very pretty. We saw the ugly mountains to the southwest that were stripped for mining, and the gorgeous valley below us with the lake and stream, and the tiny campground we were staying at, and the mountains off to the northwest.

We arrived back at camp, and Wolf was still there. He started a fire, and it was the best perfect fire. The coals were hot and the logs burning just fine, and the steaks he cooked up over them were tremendously delicious. Wolf and I were using our own pocket knives, and Led was using a plastic flatware knife. He was so adamant on finishing his steak with his own flimsy knife. I brought out the peach/ Disaronno/ raspberry honey jars I had mixed up. I poured some cups for Wolf and I, and we mixed it with cranberry juice. Quite tasty. We broke out the smores ingredients and roasted some desert. The outside of the mallow peels off and the inside is like pudding. Maybe it was that the marshmallows were so big, but, mmmm, I forgot how good they are. Later, as we sat around the campfire, Wolf led us through a sort of ritual. Three slices of paper, various things listed on each. The slice on which we listed things we disliked about ourselves, we burned in the campfire, to destroy. On the piece we listed areas we want to improve, we buried in the ground, to grow. On the last piece, we listed things we never want to forget, memories that would bring comfort in the hardest of times; that piece we each hid in our wallets.

Afterwards, we cleaned up the site and head inside the cabin to crash. We talked more about the game, then crashed. The next morning, we hit the showers, and I discovered that the KOA office sold coffee. Ah, delicious, rich coffee. It was delightful. I bought a postcard for Kail, and returned to the camp. It was time to pack up the site. We all cleared off our beds, put our clothes in our bags, returned food to the coolers, packed up the camp supplies, put all of it into the car, and swept the floors. Soon we were on the road again. We decided to drive the long way home, in favor of the beautiful scenery in the mountains. We stopped for lunch at a small-town coffee shop, called Costello Street Coffee House. The prices were really steep; half a sandwich (a small half, at that) was 5-6 bucks. Whole sandwich was 10 or 11. But the sammies were so fantastically delicious. They were completely worth the price. And the chai tea was good, too. It would be nice if they were closer to home. We left as it started to rain. Led was quiet in the back of the car for a while, but he started to poke my elbow from the back seat. After I bit, I tried smacking his hand as he tried to poke and dodge. It was fun. He drew a knotted cock on my arm. That rising artist, that Led. We drove from the mountains onto a large, open plateau, then down through a valley, following a creek downstream. We stopped to get jerky at a roadside stand. I bought cajun-spiced alligator jerky; it was expensive, but delicious. We also ate rice crispy treats in the car.

On the way back, close to almost out of the mountains, we passed by a Christian summer camp that I attended for a few years. With quite a bit of resentment welling up, I flipped it off. That's one thing on the paper I burnt this weekend; it's going to be hard to burn it out of me, for all the damage it's caused me. But I'm starting. For another post, maybe.

Back in town, we unpacked at Wolf's, hung around a bit, then went our separate ways. Oh, you know what we forgot to do? We didn't play Never Have I Ever!