Chris and I headed back to the rendezvous for Ramsey. When we got there, he was still fishing so we ate our lunch of bagels, peanut butter, and GORP. Ramsey got there a little while longer. He said he had caught a few fish, but nothing big enough to keep. He seemed really happy to be fly fishing in the mountains again. We headed back to the car and began our drive back out. On the way out, I took some pictures of the scenery that we had seen on the drive in.
Next we decided to head to another section of the Weminuche. There were two National Forest Campgrounds nearby that thought we could stay at. With the uncertainty of the weather, my cold, and our altered time tables, we decided it would be best to just do day hikes. There was one that Wendy and I had stayed at called the Vallecito Campground and another one called the Pine River Campground. Vallecito was a nice place, but I had already been there. Pine River had a closer river to it which would make fishing easier for Ramsey. I was up for seeing something new so we decided on going to the Pine River Campground. The drive was a few hours. We went back to Pagosa Springs and headed towards Bayfield. The scenery was beautiful. Ramsey spent a majority of his time answering emails on his crackberry. Along the way we passed Vallecito Reservoir. They had drained a significant amount of the water for repairs on the dam or something. There was a lot of muddy open space. The funny part was there was someone who had decided to go 4 wheeling across the lakebed and had gotten stuck. And it looked good and stuck. They had enlisted the help of someone else to help them get out, but we didn’t think that truck was going anywhere. We arrived at the campground close to dark. The Campground wasn’t as well developed as Vallecito, but it had a beautiful view from our campsite.
The River and the trail we were going to hike followed up that valley. The Meadow down below with the road going through it was private property. The trail lead through the property in the trees on the left hand side until you got to the Weminuche Wilderness boundary. That night Chris, our trail gourmet chef, cooked pepperoni pizzas using my backcountry oven. I’ve made them before and they are really tasty in the backcountry. It was nice to have someone to do the cooking for the trip though. Afterwards, Chris drove my car back into cell phone range. Chris’ wife Lisa, was having issues with their Jeep Cherokee that they had bought recently. He had talked with her on the drive in and was going back out to see how things went after he had given her a possible fix. The next day we hiked up the valley.