White Ranch Open Space Night of Adventure ("Bears," Rain, and Meteors, Oh My!)

We finally had more than two days off (we have been working a ton, including a nine day streak so that we have seven days off for our anniversary at the end of this month) and J and I were ready to go do something epic. Like possible bear fights, torrential rain and wind, and exploding space dust epic. J wanted to go camping, I wanted to watch the two meteor showers that were going on (Delta Aquarids and Perseids). We were able to combine both into a truly epic camping trip.

Meteor count was about thirty: twenty-eight or so from the Perseid meteor shower (shout-out to comet Swift-Tuttle) and two from the Delta Aquarid meteor shower. :) We watched for just under an hour.

We didn't nab any pictures of the meteors but Google it. The Perseids are gorgeous and the Delta Aquarids were a happy surprise. The showiest Perseid we saw was a blue streak that exploded with two fireballs. You couldn't miss it; it was a spectacular fireworks display! Space makes me smile.

We hiked a mile in to our campground ready to beat the thunderheads that were forming very promising looking rainclouds.

We were able to pitch our tent and organize all of our goods before a rain shower started. With our food in the bear bin and our gear in our tent we settled down in the sprinkle to...

...drink our beer! That didn't last long though as it began to rain more heavily and we escaped to our tent for 20 minutes to let the storm pass.

It was relatively nice the rest of the afternoon/early evening on our part of the mountain. The sun came out though threatening clouds surrounded us and more than one occasional light sprinkle began and ended as we cooked.

See? Even a rainbow came out!

J and I preparing our hobo packs: all kinds of good veggies with some olive oil, salt, pepper, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce, and in J's case some fresh jalapenos from our plants. Wrap that up in aluminum foil and throw it on the raging flame.

Also, goodies for tonight. Instead of s'mores we have coconut cookies and dark chocolate. We also have some herbal teas to prepare at 2:30AM when it is chilly and we are meteor watching!

As our food cooked the thunder and lightning storms continued. The lightning was a special show as we could see all the different storms traveling over Denver. We never tried to capture the lightning as it was too much fun to enjoy it.

The sky looked especially eerie at this point. There was a very bright blue patch of light that opened up for the longest time.

But enough about that, food is ready! And it was cooked to perfection.

J also rocked some corn on the cob.

J as evening fell. By the way, not to alarm anyone, but he was patrolling because we kept hearing some sort of weird animal, which we decided was a bear. We ended up hearing about five different whatever-it-was's and we doubted that there would be that many bears in one area. Just in case, we had a plan to run to the vault toilet and lock ourselves in there if we saw one. Flawless back up plan.

Don't forget dessert: melted dark chocolate and coconut cookie goodness.

As the sun set one can start to see the city lights over the Denver Metro Area.

My turn to be in the photo shoot. This was taken with the "good" Canon camera. :P

Annnnd...this was taken with the iPhone. We finally had some downtime and even walked to the north side campgrounds in order to have a better view of the city lights before we went to sleep. We headed back to the campground, prepared for bed, and doused the fire when...

Ummm, all hell rained loose! There was a bright bolt of lightning, immediate thunder, and we ran to the tent with barely enough time; the big, fat drops were already flying. If you open this image you will see that the red and yellow dot is on a green park. That's RIGHT WHERE WE ARE CAMPING. Two and a half hours later the rain finally subsided, we hadn't washed away, and were both surprisingly dry. Then the wind started up for another two hours. That was awesome, too. THEN my alarm went off at 2:30AM for us to depart the tent, sit on top of the picnic table, and watch for meteors. (No pics as we never caught one on camera. J was able to take lots of pretty star photos though!)

The next morning we were thankful for sunlight so we could start to dry the tent out. Some water had made it in but we think it was mostly condensation. Our Thermarests had kept us dry and our down bags did their job as they never were wet.

Breakfast was left over veggies scrambled with eggs and seasoned as well as butchered pancakes smothered in blueberry preserves.

Lastly, we forgot plates and we didn't have a fire poker. That is where The Rock came in (pictured, bottom). For those of you who know me well I like The Rock the actor, so The Rock in this picture was referred to as Dwayne Johnson. The larger rock was called Dwayne Johnson, Jr. They served well to move around large, hot logs, hold our aluminum foil food, and make us laugh. All things the real Dwayne Johnson would have been great at doing, as well.

It was a wonderful camping trip with way more excitement then we originally planned. Mostly, we are so glad we finally made it out to White Ranch this summer. I think we've made it there every year we've been in CO and it'll be a sad year when we don't. I think if I had to pick only one place to camp this would be it. Close to the city but still in the foothills, multiple amenities, a great Open Space administration, and fabulous views. My absolute favorite.

-TJ