I really enjoyed the transition from Summer to Fall this year—first it felt as if Summer lingered a bit longer than usual, and then transitioned rapidly (decisively) to a beautiful Autumn. Both Karen and I were eager to go camping in the cooler weather, hopefully catch some Aspens in the act of changing over.
We explored a new area that we’ve been meaning to check out for years—the Carson National Forest north of route 64, along the stretch bounded by Tres Piedras to the East and Tierra Amarilla to the West.
In classic Holmes style, we drove around for many hours even after we left the pavement, looking for the perfect spot. We found ourselves up a narrow rough bumpy road, and then encountered a tree across it. I was excited, because that implied we would be the only ones up the road—once we cleared out the tree of course. The Katana Boy makes relatively quick work of it, though it’s still some effort. Not nearly like having a chainsaw would be but totally doable.
Less than a quarter mile farther on we encountered the second tree, and my enthusiasm dampened slightly. We were still in a creepy crappy forest that wasn’t good for camping, and there was no telling how many more trees were across the road up ahead. No telling if all of this would be for naught. However, the road was narrow, super rocky, steep, and there hadn’t been a place to turn around for some time, and I wasn’t excited about backing up for a half mile, so we pushed on. Then there was the third tree shortly after that. At that point it was sheer stubborness to continue, but we were lucky—three trees and we were through.
Typically, the boys had no sense of anything special, as if it’s perfectly normal to drive to the middle of nowhere find the hardest crappiest road to the highest accessible elevation, and then clear trees off the road so we can drive even farther into the middle of nowhere. This is reflected in our video footage. I put Jasper in charge of documenting the tree cutting, and what I got was fifteen minutes of him chasing bees and jumping over trees, with a half-second glimpse of me sawing away as the camera swings past. I’m thankful though, as it indicates that such activities pass as normal for them, and there’s laughing and goofing around as the xterra is bucking and bouncing crazily over miles of rocks at a crawling pace to find a Holmes-style camping spot.
Towards the top we found some Aspen groves, and a beautiful, super remote spot up above 10,000 ft. We ended up just a few hundred feet in from a high bluff overlooking huge views to the south, and parked ourselves amongst the Aspens for a few days.
It turned out to be exactly the sort of trip we were looking for. We kept a cozy fire going to ward off the wonderful fall briskness, drank warm drinks when it was cold and cold drinks when it was warm, and zipped up our sleeping bags all the way during the cold nights. The Aspens were yellow and gorgeous and we listened to the aspen-leaf-shimmer all weekend long. The boys spent a lot of time in the hammock, and otherwise just made their own fun (the way it’s supposed to be). I did a lot of reading, both silently for myself and out loud to the kids. We ate great food and were gloriously lazy. All around huge success. So good, we’re planning on doing it again soon, before the leaves fall.
