Houses in Motion

Well, if you’re a big Talking Heads fan who reads this blog, you probably figured I’d get to using the title ‘Houses in Motion’ (from the 1980 release ‘Remain in Light’) at some point. This seemed like a good week to use it, since we found ourselves around more moving houses than we’ve seen in a while.

Also, despite the Talking Heads reference, the above meme put the old 80’s band Madness into my head like an earworm.

But I once again digress. To explain where I’m going with the post title, I probably need to start with a simple question: Where’s Nico?

Gunnison National Forest!

If you read my last post, you may recall that we had headed back south in part so we could meet us with Kristen’s mom, Janet, and Janet’s boyfriend, Dick. Well, it was time for a little Fun with Dick and Jane(t)!

For the past four years, Janet and Dick have been coming out to the Taylor Reservoir in Gunnison to enjoy some of the ATV trails with their Razr. They have several friends they’ve met over their travels, and it just so happened that when we arrived at the dispersed camping site, there was a large group of folks here for an ATV event (hence the ‘Houses in Motion’ title for this post). We arrived at the end of that event, so after a day or two, there were just a handful of trailers in the area, which was nice, as that’s more our speed.

Gunnison is a beautiful area. We stayed in a dispersed campground next to the Taylor Reservoir. Kristen and I are big fans of a good thunderstorm, and almost every day, a nice storm comes through, giving you some cool views of dark clouds and lightning rolling over the mountains – and a half hour later, there’s a good chance the sky is blue again. Here’s a view from early Wednesday evening:

We saw a moose, a slew of prairie dogs and hummingbirds, and there are a bunch of cattle that free roam through the area we’re staying. In a moment that was scary at the time but funny in hindsight, Nico decided to rustle two cows away that he deemed too close to our campsite.

Nico may have been inspired by a real life cowboy and cowgirl we passed by, who were in the middle of a cattle drive.

The cows in our campsite were less amused about the whole thing. They’ve been giving Nico the stink eye ever since.

However, despite all these other creatures, the wildest animal we met at Gunnison by far has been Janet and Dick’s six month old pup, Buddy!

Oh sure – he looks all sweet and innocent in that pic, but he’s got a lot of puppy spunk in him still! Here he is, climbing over Kristen in the Razr:

And here he decided the leash was his mortal enemy:

But as the week went on, Nico and Buddy got a chance to know each other, and both did pretty good.

We also got in some nice evenings around the campfire, and the star viewing was pretty spectacular.

Somewhat surprisingly, there isn’t much hiking in this area. We did take the dogs for a short walk with Janet along the bank of the Taylor Reservoir.

But the lack of hiking trails didn’t keep us from getting out and having fun! We went out on Razrs through some fun ATV trails, visiting Tin Cup, Pitkin, and Mirror Lake, among other spots. This may come as no surprise at this point, but I do have some pics to share.