A long weekend in the mountains

July Fourth weekend afforded us the chance at four straight days off. So we took advantage of it.

Against our better judgment, we spent July Fourth at Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs with about 10,000 other people. But it was still beautiful (and even better once we got away from crying children, strollers and all that).

The Siamese Twins trail gets you away from the crowds, mostly because it's not paved and you actually have to do a little bit of work. It's only one mile round-trip and a relatively easy hike, but it's amazing what tourists will bypass sometimes. It had the best view of Pikes Peak alongside these impressive rock formations — the Siamese Twins. 

On Saturday, we decided to get up super early and drive to Rocky Mountain National Park. Since we're still not in high-altitude shape, we chose an easier trail that promised great views — a 1.7-mile, one-way hike to Gem Lake, with 1,000 feet of elevation gain. 

The views of the Rockies along the way were incredible, and the ability to go off-trail and climb on granite rocks was the best part.

Almost to the top finally! The lake is just to the right of this ridge.

And we made it! It was the perfect place for an early lunch to cool off from the aerobic climb to the top.

The view from near the top was the absolute best, overlooking the small resort town of Estes Park. RMNP, we'll definitely be back soon.

Rocky Mountain Arsenal

The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge was an extremely pleasant surprise in such an urban area. Great trails for hiking abound, as do animals. Tread lightly, and don't forget the camera.

Find the bison!

Patterns in a frozen lake.

This guy was down one antler. Still a beautiful creature, though.

And the whole thing was free, which makes it even better. I'm still surprised at how few people were there on a Saturday so close to Denver on a warm-for-winter day. We'll definitely be back, time and time again, and I can't wait to discover the different animals and sights in each season.

Boulder adventures

Well here we are exploring Boulder already! It still feels a bit like an extended vacation, mostly because I'm not working. But it was great to get in a hike, even if it was short-lived (thanks, lack of oxygen. It makes a bigger difference than you think).

So we visited a park that boasts tons of trails, and it seemed pretty popular, so we figured it would be a good place to start seeing the beautiful locales around our new home. There was a bit of snow, but it was packed down and easy to hike on. These trails were certainly popular on Sunday morning, as we had to fight for a parking space. Did I mention it's free? BECAUSE IT'S FREE!

Here's a photo early in the hike looking back over the town of Boulder:

And here's a photo of Boulder's famous Flatirons — it was an incredibly warm and sunny day:

Don't mind the rock climbers — they were hiking up to, I assume, take advantage of the Flatirons' well-known rock climbing.

A sweet adventure

With a rare Sunday sans football, John and I decided to make it special. We woke up early, went out to breakfast (Pancake Mill!), and drove past Florence to this great little web of hiking trails. We discovered them with the South Coast Striders many months ago, and I wanted to go back, just us, for more exploring.

We stopped off a Beaver Creek Falls first (and for some reason, my photos loaded out of order a bit, so there's another photo of Beaver Creek Falls later).

If you climb out onto this huge tree that fell across the creek, you get a great vantage point. The view was worth the bushwhacking we had to do to get here — the trail was a bit overgrown.

Then we drove down to the Homestead trailhead of Sweet Creek Falls, which takes you through this gorgeous canyon for about a mile, ending at Sweet Creek Falls itself. The last time we were there, the water flow was much higher, as it was late spring. Right now, the creek had to deal with a very dry summer, and will soon be up and at 'em. 

Low water flow, we discovered allowed us to sneak down by the creek and wander around much more.

More mini waterfalls along the way.

This stop off was my favorite little side excursion. There were three waterfall tiers (which I couldn't quite get into one photo, as the lower one was quite a bit lower), and how beautiful is this? We were right on the water after a little climbing off the trail.

Here's the random photo of Beaver Creek Falls that got stuck in the middle. Ha.

And back to the off-trail excursion. We found this crawdad wandering about aimlessly. We watched him for about five minutes as he decided where he should re-enter the water — it's a treacherous area for such a little guy, and he eventually (and cautiously) tumbled into a pool.

Here's the lower portion of Sweet Creek Falls. There's a small trail that leads you to the upper viewpoint and upper tier of the falls, but it's running awfully low this time of year, so no photo of that. But this little area was quite pretty. We sat on some rocks in a quiet pool of water right below the falls; this area hadn't been touched by the hot sun, so it cooled us off from the 70-plus-degree day.

And here are a few more photos on the hike back, when the light was better to capture all the beautiful falls along the way. A few of these looks quite impressive with higher water flow, but look delicate at summer's end.