Camping: Denny Creek

As I mentioned before, I had another camping trip coming up and hopefully it would be presented in "Rain Free" Edition.

Thursday night I spent gathering all my camp gear together so I could pack the car that night, but it got to be so late that I went to bed and planned to do it in the morning. Yeah, right!
Friday morning I was dragging and to top it off.... it was spinkling (not quite raining, but definitely wet).
"Ugh! I guess I'll come home and pack after work instead."

When I got to work, it started to rain even more and continued throughout the morning.
Talk about depressing! It had been nice ALL week until then. Why did it have to be raining now?!? My last 4 camping trips all involved being in the rain. Just great.
Then around 1:00 it stopped. At 2:00 you could see pieces of blue sky. By 5:00 it was sunny, dry and warm. Woo-hoo!!!
And it stayed nice all during our camping trip.

After work, I dashed home, packed the car and drove east on I-90 almost to the summit of Snoqualmie Pass to a little campground at Denny Creek. The campground is really nice and near a lot of great hikes for both experienced and novice hikers, as well as for children.
Anyway, I got there and was immediately fed a couple of hot dogs to keep up my strength so I could put my tent up.
Then I made some "pizza pockets" over the campfire. Other than that, Friday was relatively quiet.


Saturday, however, I got up and started a campfire and began making breakfast. I was soon joined by the rest of the campers and we all enjoyed a big breakfast!
I made bacon & hashbrowns. G-Rod made toasted bagels with egg. And Atul made coffee.
Then we sat around and waited for more of our little group to show up, which they did around 10:00 a.m.

I went on a short hike with G-Rod, Sim, and Sim's mom up to the Slippery Slabs on Denny Creek.





We came back to get some lunch, and some of our group had arrived while we were away.
Lunch consisted of whatever anyone wanted to make and share, and then we proceeded to enjoy being in the outddors and fresh air:


The afternoon was sunny, so we made some "Sunprints" with leaves and flowers we collected on our hike earlier.
Later in the afternoon, some of our group had to leave and go home. They weren't able to stay for the night, but had just come out to visit.
We made another campfire, ate dinner. shifted our chairs as the campfire smoke blew in our direction, and 'chillaxed' some more.

Remember those huckleberries we picked at the last camp? Well, I brought 'em and made campfire huckleberry pies. Here's what they look like:
(1)
(2)
(3)
Put a little butter and cinnamon & sugar on one half of the pie-iron, place a piece of bread on it and then a spoonful of berries(1). Add some butter and brown sugar(2). Top it with another piece of bread(3) and then cook it over the coals of your campfire (or charcoal briquets).

And when you're done cooking it, hopefully it DOESN'T look something like this:

Yup! I burned mine ALL the way through. I had made three other ones earlier and they came out great, but when I got to mine I got sidetracked with something and it got burned to a cinder!
Needless to say, I didn't get to eat one so I don't know how it tasted. But everyone else who had one said they came out great.
"No complaints here!"

In the middle of the night, after we'd all gone to bed, we had a night-visitor:
Those dark-colored 'peanuts' are animal droppings. I'm not sure what it was that actually chewed through the plastic, but we had several critters running around the campsite.



This little guy was eating crumbs from a muffin that got dropped earlier in the morning.



And this dirty bird was taking advantage of the hole that got chewed through the lid to the nuts. He pecked at it for a while until he figured out how to get his beak in far enough to grab a cashew, then off he flew with his prize.

So to wrap it all up, we had an awesome fun time. The sun was shining. The campsite was dry.
Our short hike was pleasant. And great company was enjoyed with one another.

Our next trip is coming up Labor Day Weekend and hopefully the weather will turn out nice for that one as well.

Hotness & I will be taking off for vacation in a couple of days. If you don't see any posts for a while, fear not. I will return with stories and adventures from Missoula, MT.