Our Staycation - Camp Hale

We love to visit Camp Hale - just over an hour's drive from our home. Camp Hale is an old WWII army base in the Colorado mountains on the way to Leadville. It was used for the 10th Mountain Division soldiers to train them in winter mountain conditions such as skiing and repelling. It was also a Japanese P.O.W. camp.

We just spend an extended weekend camping at Camp Hale with Gerry's parents. The great thing is that Gerry's mother lived there as a child. She actually lived in Pando - which was across the road from the army base. Her father was a government hired civilian worker that ran heavy equipment. The kids love to hear Grandma's stories of when she lived at Camp Hale. She was around 5 years old when she lived there. The prisoners were low risk and were able to somewhat roam around the camp. They used to make wooden toys for her. Once she walked into her home and a prisoner was asleep on the couch. He woke up and ran out the door. At one point Camp Hale had 14,000 army men there.

Camp Hale was demolished at the end of the war and to save money, they dug some holes and buried army vehicles. There are entire foundations of buildings all over the place and many of the roads still remain in place. The roads are still labeled. It's a virtual treasure hunt for the boys as they dig up pieces of metal and find nails, etc.

It's also a four-wheeler heaven! We love to ride there as there's miles of mountain trails. It rained most of the weekend, so our riding was limited. Luckily we camp here every year. We can also just park the Winnebago wherever we want = FREE! (Love that!) I forgot to take pictures of Camp Hale this time - bad, bad blogger!

Leadville

One day we drove up to Leadville - which has the highest elevation of an incorporated city in the United States. We toured the mining museum and spent a while driving through some of the old mining sites.

Donuts

We have a tradition of making homemade donuts from tube biscuit dough when we are camping. They are the easiest breakfast to make. We just roll out a piece into a ball and cut out the center with a pill bottle.

Next, we fry up the donuts or the donut holes in a dutch oven on our camp stove. Then we roll in cinnamon and sugar in a Ziplock. (Easy clean up.)

With our herd, the donuts are usally eaten in less than 5 minutes flat! Yummy!

Random

By the way, here's a cute pictue of Lacey. (obviously not wearing this dress camping) She was sleeping when we took the other pictures.