Camping in the Poudre Canyon

We went camping this last weekend with my family (including Michael, obviously, and my sister's roommate) and it was AWESOME! I finally got my fill of camping for the year (the dime-sized bug bites are a strong motivator to not do it again for a while...) We went up to the Poudre Canyon (that probably wins the contest for stupidest/most-to-make-you-laugh names of a river/canyon) which is just west of Fort Collins. The weirdest part is that I went to school in Fort Collins for 4 years and NEVER went up the Poudre! But I finally got to experience it, and it was absolutely gorgeous!
It rained off and on, which was annoying; not just because it limits what activities you can do, but also we've spent the summer in record heat (something like 25 straight days of over 90 degree weather) and no rain... until the week of us going camping... it's a family curse! And you think I'm joking...
We got to see 3 moose on a little excursion we went on up the canyon. None of us younger people had ever seen one, so it was really exciting! I must say, moose are very weird-looking!
We also did a little treasure-hunting while we were up there. There is an activity called geocaching where you get the coordinates of a hidden cache and go on a hunt for it. There are thousands, all over the world! We picked two to do and it was so much fun. On the first one, we learned that it's important to read the whole description, as well as the hint to find it properly. We got the wrong coordinates (not our fault) and went on a hike along the Poudre for about a 1/2 mile until we realized it was back where we started-- except that it was a beautiful hike, it was a bit annoying-- and the actual finding of the cache was a bit disappointing... Oh well. The next one we found was much more fun and a beautiful hike as well! If you have a gps reader, I highly suggest you get involved! It's so much fun!
We also got to experiencing high centering our car on a rock that took the muscles of 4-5 other guys with my dad and Michael to get it off.
But the food was DELICIOUS! I don't eat eggs, don't ask why, but we had some our first morning and they were some of the best eggs I've ever had! We had a seafood bake for lunch and steak and potatoes over the fire for dinner. Yeah, as you can tell, we do what Michael calls "gourmet camping." We had to have the chicken salad sandwiches for dinner the first night cuz it was raining too hard to get a fire started (and it was way too late by the time it stopped to even think about starting that kind of meal). Camping food tastes way better than if you were to have the exact same thing at home. We were all trying to figure out why that is, but all we could really come up with was that we were outside, it was cooked over a fire, and it just does taste better! Oh, and I forgot the sourdough pancakes the last morning....mmmmm pancakes are one of my favorite foods! I usually eat 3 of them, but that morning I had 5 (maybe 6) and 2 pieces of bacon! Boy was it good!
And last but not least, the shower after camping.... nothing comes even close to the feeling of getting clean after being in the mountains for 3 days and no shower! It's heavenly!