National Geographic burns stinky

So, we went to Rocky Mountain National Park this past weekend to camp in the park and hear the elk bugle (you can hear it here and here - this second one is strange quasi-elk porn with a really whiny bull elk). We went with a soon-to-be-married couple, Scott and Kara (you can see a picture of them in a previous post here) and their dog Charlie.

The weather was "typical" Colorado weather: it rained and was chilly and windy for 1/2 an hour and then it was sunny and hot for an hour, like that over and over. These were the conditions during our Cub Lake hike. I was lucky enough to get to hike with this rugged male model:

While stopped at Cub Lake we were pestered by gray jays, ducks (they actually came out of the water to beg for food), and chipmunks. This one chipmunk, after s/he learned that we were not going to give up the goods, dug up an ancient potato chip and snacked for our viewing pleasure:


Later in the early evening it rained quite hard for about 45 minutes or so. During this time the four of us (and Charlie) took shelter in their car. We shared a bit of Fisheye Shiraz to help the time pass. As soon as the rain died down we hopped out and started to cook dinner. This led to building a fire and having more wine, which led to burning everything we could find in our vehicles that would burn. When we got down to the last of the few bundles of wood we brought, then we scavenged the cars. Of course, I had a bunch of old tissues. Here are the wine drinking pyros (well, three of them are represented - Scott is not pictured):


Sandy found two old National Geographics in our car and we did burn those but I don't recommend it - their glossy pages are stinky to burn, reminiscent of plastic...

The fire died out and we retired to our respective tents. When we woke up this was the view from the tent:

About ten minutes after this it clouded up and rained hard for about 20 minutes...