Nice campsite, great view, but. . .

©2014 Lydia Hinshaw

The view from just behind our campsite

 KETCHUM, ID -- Checking out the Easley Campground Thursday afternoon, we were captivated by this view.  There were only 10 campsites and only one other was occupied.  Our senior citizen rate was $6.

 What could go wrong?  Well, there was no hot spring available, as advertised on the sign out on the highway.  The concession had closed for the season. That would have been fun.

 The evening passed pleasantly, but then the sun went down and the temperature dropped alarmingly.

 I woke up at midnight and our digital indoor-outdoor thermometer read 23.  When I woke up again just after 5 a.m., it was down to 18, a new low for our record book.

 I built a fire but it didn't do much good, as even a big fire is a tiny pinpoint of heat in a universe of cold.

 Prince Charming finally woke up about 7, and we didn't have to take a vote about what to do.  We packed up as fast as we could, scraped the ice off the windshield and headed out, noting with sympathy that three mountain bikers had come in late the night before, and were asleep in coffin-sized bivy tents covered with frost.

 We were only 14 miles from Ketchum, where we warmed up in a coffee shop for an hour before we walked around to check out some of Ernest Hemingway's haunts.

 We'd been running ahead of the weather for several days, and we've still avoided precipitation, but the cold has caught us.  Our four nights in federal campgrounds cost us $16 total, allowing us to save up for the motels in our future.