Mt. Elbert / Mt. Massive Camping Trip - Day 2

August 3rd, 2010

Well for Tuesday I got up early and headed to Emerald Lake to do a little fishing. I took Mable with me and she just sat and whined. So I took her back and put her in the truck. I will tell you I threw everything I had in my arsenal and didn’t catch a damn thing. Several times I could even see the fish following the lure up to the bank and then turning away.

Even without catching a fish, the morning wasn’t a total loss as I had one of the best laughs I have had in a while. Let me see if I can put it in paper as funny as it was to me.

While sitting on the backside of the lake, I could hear voices of others making their way up from the parking lot. From what I could tell from across the lake it was 5 teenage boys. They were loud and yelling to each other as they all picked a spot to fish. So after listing to them ramble back and forth for a while, all of a sudden one of the boys on the end jumps up, yelling and screaming BEAR, BEAR!

I looked over and all I could see what a big fat round all black Labrador dog. The two kids sitting closest to the boy who thought he had seen a bear were also running half-way down the lake shore. I laughed so hard I was rolling. So was the owner of the dog who starting calling the dog to come back.

Oh, man the four boys really started ripping the kid that shouted bear. The entire episode was hilarious!

It was now about 11am and I decided it was time for me to move on. To go back I had to swing past the kids. As I came across the first one I noticed he had KU shirt on, another had on a Goddard High School shirt. One asked me if I had any luck and I replied no it’s not like Bass fishing in KS. They all perked up and told me they were from Goddard KS. Goddard is very close to Wichita where I lived for a while and often visit family there. I finished with telling them to watch out for those pesky bears! We all laughed.

Being almost lunch time I decided to drive over to Leadville and get some lunch. Also I wanted to get cell phone reception so I could see the morning’s emails. Not that I was going to do anything with the email but just felt like I needed to stay in the loop.

I parked on Main Street and decided to walk the street and get some coffee, lunch and check out a few of the shops. I had some luck as I found a Colorado 1931 license plate in excellent shape. Once I get the Model A on the road I will have this plate registered.

I was back at the campsite around 3:30pm. I went ahead and built a fire and then decided to try my luck fishing in the stream. Again no luck! Maybe it was from all the rain that we had the day before? Last year in September I managed to catch several fish.

The menu for the night was baked potato and steak. Everything turned out perfect and was one of the best meals I had had in a while. Plus I was really hungry and they may have helped everything taste as good as it did.

Luckily no rain this evening and I just kicked back by the fire with the whining dog sitting on my lap. Bed time was about 10pm as I planned on hiking on Mt. Massive the next day.