charismatic megafauna since 1985

Colorado

Cold. We stayed at Routt National Forest and the mercury started dropping
as the sun started to set. We broke out the cold-weather clothes and started
to make dinner. We ended up with Kraft Macroni & Cheese with some veggies
thrown in for vitamins. In the plate, it looked like yellow paste, and it had
the texture of paste, but being warm when everything else wasn’t made up for a
lot. This isn’t to say that Tess and Arlen aren’t good cooks (they are), but
the altitude (~6500 feet) and the wind were doing something weird. All three
of us tried to start a fire, but were entirely unsucessful. Getting the water
to boil took forever, but the pasta was mushy after only 6 or 7 minutes.

As we were packing up for the night, I said to Tess that we should put the
water (we have a 5 gal. jug) in the car so that it doesn’t freeze. Tess blew
me off, telling me that there was no way that it was going to get that cold. I
didn’t believe her, but we left the water outside anyways. Going to bed, we
piled into the tent and piled the down blanket on top of all of us to keep our
heat in. Even with that and the three of us packed into the tent, it was still
a cold night.

When we woke up the next morning, Tess was the first one out the flap. “Holy
crap!” she said, as she looked out on a field of thick frost.