A LITTLE CABIN IN THE WOODS

I've taken to hiking close to home this year. The gas prices are so high that I don't want to drive anywhere to hike. I used to hike at Roxborough State Park while Emma was in preschool because I didn't want to waste gas driving to and from the school twice a day. For the three hour period of her class I hiked, de-stressed, got healthy, exercised and sometimes listened to continuing legal education tapes while viewing just beautiful sites.

Now both kids ride the school bus, so no driving is needed and it makes more sense to hike close to home. There is a lot of area to hike here. I've been following trails I find that prohibit motor vehicle/dirt bike traffic. Those trails lead to others and I just keep exploring. Often I run into National Forest signs, but the area is also criss crossed with private property.

One trail has lead to a hidden camp with wood picnic tables, a rope and board swing from a tree, two grills, a fire ring (maybe two) with logs set up all around to sit on. What I saw first on the trail was a protrubrance from the ground that looked like a big can on the ground with a toilet seat cover. Then when I looked across I found the camp. It looked like a forest service toilet without the wooden restroom structure/outhouse around it.

Another time I've found the trail ending at an incredible view (photos to come) or great rocks to climb on.

I had gone on a new trail last week that followed a creek bed, it was so beautiful and green and dappled sunny but shady enough to be cool on a hot summer day. I stopped when Jake (my dog) and I saw what looked like a tent and heard a dog bark and two male voices. I decided to backtrack for safety's sake. But on the road back home I noticed where they had parked and decided to continue on the same trail another day when they weren't there.

Today we did that and I found a little cabin in the woods. It's log with concrete chinking, and actually had electricity at one time, a propane tank at one time, so it had gas, and there was a phone line. It was locked and the windows had locks. The furniture had mostly been emptied out. Peeking in one window I saw a claw footed tub and toilet,in another a chromey woodburning stove. It has a fireplace made of slabs of flagstone. Over the front door was a sign that said "Little Cabin in the Woods". There was also a wooden box with a pencil in it that said if they weren't home to leave a note. You could tell they hadn't been home in a long time.

They had dammed the creek and so there was a little pond, a wide open, flat, grassy spot in front of it. There were some out buildings that reinforced that the place hadn't been used in quite a while and a little pine slab/bark covered outhouse that had a sign on it to "get your Denver Post here".

What a find!!! I followed the trail beyond it that turned into a road to see where it ended up and it did at a road. I'll start taking the camera to share some of what I consider little treasures.