Mt. Falcon Park, Colorado Day 1

We were picked up outside Starbucks in that nasty part of Denver and were taken over to Mt. Falcon Park where our backpacking was to begin. On the way there, my 'uncle' was stopped by the police for making some weird turn. He acted crazy too, getting out of the car and trying to make jokes with the cop; it was pretty halirious. We were let go, and made it safely there. The sun was already beginning to set and one look up the trail told us we had a ways to go before we could make camp. (Which was technically illegal there.) I didn't adjust well to the altitude, and to make matters worse had just started my period so horrible cramps and altitude sickness plagued me the whole hike up, up, and further up. Chuck was a complete gentleman though and stopped with me everytime I needed a break and even carried my pack a little ways! We finally couldn't go any further that evening and needed to set up camp. Unfortunately, we ended up doing it on a HUGE slope. We got off the trail a bit, set our tent up directly over some cactus the first time and then moved it. The next week was spent repeatedly saying, "Did you know there were cactus in Colorado? I didn't. Wow, that's crazy."

Once we were set up, we cooked our first first meal (some oatmeal), sat down in the darkness and smoked a joint while we watched all the lights slowly twinkle out in Denver. We had an amazing view but we didn't have a great camping spot. Because of the slope we were on, the entire night was spent sliding to the bottom of the tent and crawling back up. It was worth it in the morning though, we crawled out of our tent grouchy and sleepy only to see 7 or 8 deer grazing not 50 feet away. We took a picture and packed up ASAP so no one would know we camped there, fixed some oatmeal and headed on our merry way.