Sometimes camping (sorry: glamping) is a lot like being at home: food still needs to be shopped for, laundry needs doing, and Russ still needs attention.

But now he’s off for a three-day ride through Wetmore and Florence and one other place whose name I can’t remember, before joining me again at the Elk Creek Campground in Gunnison, CO. He finally took off at about 11:30; I headed in the other direction to do our laundry in Pueblo. Got back mid-afternoon, when the heat had me dozing for awhile. (I don’t mind this dry heat, but when the wind dies down it gets a bit overwhelming. And we don’t have electricity here, so no air conditioning.)

About 5:00 I roused myself, fed Moe, and then walked down the hill to a narrow cove of the lake just below our camp site. The water gradually petered out and we explored the narrow, twisting, dry canyon for quite a ways. Admired the beautifully sculpted sandstone walls and the hundreds of globular cliff swallow mud nests.

Once we made it back to the lakeshore, I stepped into the water just to enjoy the cool. Moe, straining at the end of his leash, declined to join me. I sat for a bit by the water’s edge watching birds doing their evening thing: common grackles picking along the shoreline for edibles, killdeer and a spotted sandpiper objecting to my presence, lark sparrows coming to the water’s edge to drink, western kingbirds swooping and diving after insects. I hoped this would be the evening a mule deer would come down the canyon to drink, but no luck (Russ and I have both seen mule deer close to camp). It felt good to just sit and feel peaceful.

(Did I take pictures, you ask? Why no: I have a bad habit of heading out willy-nilly; no preparation at all. The only reason I even have poo bags for Moe is because they permanently reside in my shorts pocket.)

Sun is heading down; dinner tonight is the last of the macaroni salad and a cold Dr. Pepper.