Mueller State Park Day 1

This January we brought home a new addition to our tribe - The Tortuga (a 2015 Rockwood Premier Pop-Up Camper) Our maiden voyage was to Mueller State Park. It was the end of May, which is usually a lovely, yet sometimes rainy and a bit chilly spring month here in Colorful Colorado. However, this year we experienced an unusually soggy and cold "Sprinter". Spring sort of never quite arrived until June. On our trip we enjoyed everything Mama Nature wanted to toss our way - sunshine, rain, hail, warmth, cold, and snow - twice! It all added to the adventure and we had a grand time exploring some place new and quite groovy!!

Mueller is an awesome State Park and we want to come back again. There are a grillion and two hiking trails, beautiful vistas, loads of wild life, a fantastic nature center and some way cool experiences close by. We took advantage of as much as we could!

Our camping spot was gorgeous! It was completely surrounded by deep woods. There were some campers in spots near us when we arrived, but there were so many beautiful trees we hardly noticed they were there. It was like being in our very own forest all to ourselves- dense thickets and plenty of room to explore. There were no grand views at our site, but the ability to investigate the wilderness more than made up for that. We wound up calling our expedition Scatmandu, as we encountered so many varieties of scat, tracks and signs of wildlife. In the evening we could hear the wild turkeys from our campfire and as we arrived we were buzzed by a small bird of prey on our site.

I've been reading a fantastic book by Dr Scott Sampson called How To Raise a Wild Child. It's all about connecting kids with nature and I loved being able to employ some of the techniques in such a wild surrounding. We wandered, we sit-spotted, we touched, we felt, we heard, we smelt, we experienced it all with our full suite of senses. It was incredible!

So here's day one; we drove, we set up, we played, it snowed. The Tortuga kept us warm and dry and Sneaky Snacky Squirrel kept us happy! We learned quickly that camping in active bear country is a bit different than just regular ole camping (which was great to learn since our next trip is in the thick of it!) It's a whole new ball of cheese. Different way of cooking and cleaning and storing food. We learned what to take and, more importantly, what not to take with us to the big trek north. Glad to learn it two hours away and not 11 hours away! Thanks Mueller!!! It was a short day, but it was fun none the less. Enjoy!

yes, that is a snowflake on his eyebrow