Day Twenty-Six: July 4th

This morning we had coffee and I stoked our ashes into a morning fire because I was cold. I am beginning to become a bit of a pyromaniac. My ability to start a fire makes me feel invincible. I can burn anything I want and there is plenty around here to burn. Of course many of the Fourth of July-ers brought old pallets and chainsaws to burn, but I don't need all that. I'm a two paper towel special. I hope to get that down to zero paper towels and one match, but I'm pretty happy with my skills for now.

We quickly broke camp so we would have time to cook our planned feast once we got to Silverton. The drive was really nice. We stopped off in Ouray (pronounced U-Ray) for lunch because traffic was backed up like crazy and we were again starving. We were right proud of ourselves when we pulled over, unhitched our bikes and cruised into town while all our four wheeled friends waited interminably.

At the end of town and an interminable hill (curse those cars and their motors!), we found a German Biergarten that had spaetzle for me to eat. Robert got a brat, I got krautspaetzle (minus the bacon), and we split fries and a salad. The fries were so terrible we only ate half the basket, but really, they were an abomination. The krautspaetzle was pretty good though so it wasn't a complete wash. Then a short trip back through town via bike. Candy and people littered the streets and there were potato sack races in the park. It seemed like a very wholesome, American town.

We continued our drive into Silverton with a ridiculous stretch of road. Speed limit signs read thing like curly-q road ahead, 5 miles per hour, or loopy road, don't even try to go faster than 10 miles per hour. Oh, and there were no guardrails. The entire way. None. Who makes a curvacious road at the top of sheer cliffs and doesn't install guardrails!? Robert took it like a champ, he knew what to expect because he had driven it before, and I enjoyed the vistas, even when they made me remind Robert that two hands are better than one. There was a reason he wanted to drive this part and I respected his decision.

We found Silverton easily enough and David on main street restocking at the liquor store. More bud light lime...gross. We followed him back to their camp, basically just outside of town in some public land near a river. It was free, resultantly crowded, but nice enough for one night. We pitched our tent nearby and then set up the monstrous gazebo. All were appropriately impressed with our set up and story: we live outside. It was crazy windy so it took us a while to set her up and stake her down adequately. Thanks go to Jason for letting us borrow his mallet for the stakes; we had been using a framing hammer!

Next we unhitched our bikes again to jaunt into town to get brown sugar, fishing spoons, cinnamon, 'maters, white sugar and a few other unpass-up able items like lotion! It is so dry in CO that Robert and I are seemingly flaking away into nothingness.

Back at camp our cooking began. Everyone seemed fairly der-wasted and surprised at our culinary plan, standard fare for July Fourth, just a bit ambitious for camping I suppose: burgers, potato salad and apple cobbler. Robert was in charge of the potatoes as I sat and chatted while I peeled apples, ten apples to be exact. The potato salad turned out to be a big hit and only left us with one tupperware of leftovers, five potatoes maybe is two too many, even for a crowd. Then came burgers, mine an Amy's Texas Style veggie burger, Robert's a 1/2 lb monster with onions, jalepeno, bacon, salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic, and soy sauce. It made all the other boys drool.

Then came the apple cobbler. We got an apple crisp mix for the top crusty bit and ten peeled granny smith apples for the innards, plus sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, and a little flour. We put it on the coals from the day fire that had been going most of the day and then thirty five minutes later....mmm mmm good. Everyone who tried it loved it and lots of people tried it, but we still had leftovers. Of well. We have been talking about how we need a miniature Dutch over just for us so we don't make too much food, which is our usually m.o.

Then fireworks. We could see them pretty well from our beach front camp. So we lined our chairs up next to the crazy bonfire the boys started and enjoyed the show. It was very nice, there were even some giant ones that were so big they took up the whole sky. According to our volunteer fireman on hand, then were sixteen inch cone fireworks that are no longer in production in the us. I haven't fact checked though, but they were by far my favorite. One was a waterfall, one was a jellyfish, another was a weeping willow. Then maybe a few duplications. The smaller fireworks were regular, but nicer because of the mountainous back drop. When the fireworks ended, we looked over at the road going from Silverton to Durango and it was one continuous line of cars all the way around the mountainside. It reminded me of those old coca-cola commercials, where it's snowing and cars are driving through the night. Locals said that last year it took until two or three in the morning to get home.

We sat up for a little bit, but it was cold and everyone was tired from a long day. We could see some beautiful stars though: big and small dippers, scorpious, corona borealis, and the Milky Way. I really really need a star chart app for this silly pad of mine, but i keep forgetting when we have internet.