Colorado Trip and Mega Picspam!
So about a year month or so ago, I went to Colorado. I said I was going to make a post about the trip and never did. Until now. I know you've all been dying to read the details, right? Right?
As I’ve probably mentioned, my sister and nephew live in Parker and since my nephew is the only grandkid that doesn’t have four legs and fur, my parents bought a second home in Highlands Ranch so they could watch the little guy grow up. Or see the various stages his hair goes through. My sister loves styling the kid's hair and now he's into it too. He's five. He knows hair gel.
Every 4th of July, I fly to Denver to hang for as much time as work can spare but unfortunately, the 4th happens at a very bad time at work so I can only manage about five days and three of those are weekend/holiday. I love going out there at that time because my parent’s townhouse is right on the Town Center and there’s a very cheesy but fun parade that goes right in front of their house. Also, they are higher up than Denver so from their spacious front porch, we can watch the HR fireworks as well as see the fireworks all the way down to where the Rockies play. It’s just very cool and makes a holiday I had grown to not like very enjoyable. My dislike of the 4th has to do with the fact that we are densely populated and yet, VA does not ban the sale of fireworks nor do they ban setting off fireworks in city limits. So, after catching a couple of idiot kids about to fire off a string of fireworks near the gas tank of my car, and finding spent bottle rockets on the hood of my car, I decided I did not want to ever be home over the 4th.
I was very excited to go to CO this year, not only because it was my first real vacation in a year-and a very rough, stressful, year-but because my dad and I had made plans for a long horseback ride up a mountain. Originally, we were going to do an 8-hour ride over the Continental Divide however, we found out that we could only do that in August because there’s still too much snow in July. Ok, on to Plan B. Plan B was to ride up to the boulder fields of Longs Peak. We found out the day before our ride that because of the late snows, a lot of the passes were still blocked with snow packs. So now we were on to Plan C. Dad called (he was so in to doing this that he actually had a plan A, B and C) another place and found an 8 hour ride up Wild Basin to Thunder Lake, which is on the backside of Longs Peak. It didn’t have the cool factor of saying we rode horseback over the Continental Divide but riding up to a mountain lake, yeah, pretty awesome!
I arrived on Wednesday and immediately my stepmother, Sammie, was all excited to take me over to the new Whole Foods in Littleton, I think. I love Whole Foods. Could spend hours in the place and always drop some $$. This place was like…heaven. Seriously, I contemplated moving there just so I could visit this place every day. It was amazing!
Thursday we did a lot of hanging around and getting stuff together for the trip to Allenspark and the ride. It was just going to be me and my dad--no one else in the family has the love of horses that we have-and at first I was a little disappointed. I liked the idea of having the family along but we couldn’t get into the nicer lodges and my sister had to work. But this really worked out well because unlike my sisters and my dad, my dad and I have always gotten along very well, which is surprising given he and my mom divorced when I was 4 and I didn’t grow up around him. Then again, maybe that’s why we do get along. He and my sisters tend to argue a lot. When he’s being surly, they send me in to get him back in a good mood. Anyway, we drove up to Allenspark the night before the ride and had a reservation at the Sunshine Mountain Lodge.
When we found the place off the highway, we actually kept going. It took us a couple of passes before we sucked it up and accepted that we had no other place to stay. The place was nestled in the woods and very...rustic. I was even more worried when we pulled up and noticed an old out house on the grounds. But our cabin really wasn't that bad--if you could get past that it was one room with two beds, had one small bathroom, no TV, and came with a large colony of spiders and ants. When my dad and I got there, it was around 8pm. We both sat there and stared at each other then decided we'd walk up to the main house and watch some TV or something. We make the trek up down there and then sit in the living room and talk. It was nice but as we walked back to the cabin in the pitch black and nearly got lost, we realized we could have done that at the cabin.
We had the cabin on the end and reminded my dad and I of one of those places from the Friday the 13th movies. Yeah, between the spiders nesting above my head, the giant carpenter ant that was crawling on my arm, and the thought of Jason coming in to kill me, I didn't get much sleep that night. But the bed really was comfortable.
We got up at 6am but didn't have to be at the stables until 8am. Unfortunately, nothing near us was open for breakfast but we'd packed something just in case so breakfast for us consisted of very strong coffee, beef jerky and muffins from Whole Foods. The mountain air was crisp, the sun was shining from a cloudless blue sky, and it was so peaceful that off in the distance I could hear a rooster crowing. It was pretty awesome--except for the fact that I was dead tired from the two hours of sleep I'd gotten.
Allenspark is this little spit of a town that mostly consists of a stables, a lodge and a few houses. The night before, as we drove through the place, a guy came out of his cabin, bent down and yeah, full moon over CO. My dad laughed about that for days. We got to the stables a little early and were told that we needed to drive a little further down the road to the Wild Basin Stables. So down we went. Wild Basin was really pretty. The stables were small but there were about five of us going out that morning.
My horse, Thunder, was a paint who was kind of a celebrity. He'd been in the movie, Return to Lonesome Dove. My dad rode this huge, white draft horse named Gandolf.
Only my dad and I were doing the 8 hour ride so while we all saddled up together, the others headed off on a different path. For us, it was my dad, me and our guide, this woman whose name escapes me. But it was funny because she'd only been in CO a couple of months. Before then she'd been in Northern VA and knew all the places we knew and went to school about a mile from my house. Very small world. Definitely made for a bonding moment as well.
That's my dad and our guide. I was bringing up the rear on the ride up.
The ride up was beautiful.
The trail was rocky.
And then there was the roar of water. We had to ford a couple of streams but the Calypso Cascades had a very nice wooden bridge. You'll see why.
On the way up we passed this sign. It just made me laugh.
Unfortunately, we did not pass one llama on the way.
Did I mention the rocky trail? Rocky trails aren't so bad going up. Coming down is the butt breaker.
When we finally reached our destination, we had to tie up the horses at the top of the trail and then hike down to the very small ranger's cabin near the lake. I'd like to say we were the only three people up there because the only way to get to Thunder Lake is horseback, hike, helicopter but when we arrived, there was this one hiker, out on the snow bank, taking pictures. Yes, he immediately started chatting up our guide.
And once we hiked down the trail, this was the prize: Thunder Lake. It's at 10,500 ft and it was beautiful!
See the snow?
I launched a couple of snowballs at my dad. First time I've ever thrown a snowball in July. There was lots of snow still up there and along the way, as we got closer to the lake, we went through a few snow packs on the trail. Besides the snow, the things that stuck out to me were the peacefulness and the air. The only sounds you hear are the rustling of the trees. No birds, no planes, no cell phones (no cell phone towers or telephone lines). It was just pure. And the air. Wow, the air was pristine and crisp and what air should be.
We had lunch on the porch of the cabin and then took about an hour to get our land legs back, take pictures and explore the lake, then pee behind the cabin before saddling up and heading back. Let me just say that the ride up was very pleasant. The ride back, not so much. My horse was not as sure-footed as the two bigger horses so he tended to slide down the rocks a little. And when we came to the steps, he would hesitate and then jump down. Let me just say, this does a number on the butt. I didn't take a lot of pics on the way back but the guide took this one of my dad and I crossing the bridge over Ouzel Falls.
It was very sunny and shifted between hot and cold on the ride up. On the ride back, the clouds started to roll in and by the time we came off the mountain, it was raining. We put on our rain gear and galloped a bit once we hit the flat, grassy land but it was pouring and we got drenched. By the time we got back to the stable, we were soaked and cold and tired and sore and smelled of horse but both my dad and I said we'd definitely do it again. Hell, he was trying to convince me to come out again in August so we could do the Continental Divide ride.
We drove back to Highlands Ranch and actually had a great laugh about the last day and a half. We even plotted how we could commit a murder and hide a body on the mountain. That still makes me laugh. Even though we were still in our wet clothes and pretty scuzzy from being on a horse all day (and I had terrible hat hair), we contemplated heading into Boulder so we could eat at our favorite brew pub but the call of a hot shower was stronger so that's what we did. I never slept so hard in my life. But I have to say the trip was great on so many levels. I got to do this one thing with my dad. Just the two of us. And it was awesome. It's a happy memory I'll cherish forever.
For the 4th we did the usual watch the parade, eat all day, watch fireworks at night thing. My sister's BF came over with his two boys and my cousin I haven't seen in 22 years came by. It was great to see him and since he's a chef and I'm a foodie, we had the best conversation.
The next day we drove up to Breckenridge to an art show, which was really fun. We ate on the back deck of this restaurant and the view of the mountains and the weather was awesome! My dad has taken up painting in his older age and loves to hit the art shows. He goes off and looks at paintings; my stepmother and I go off and look at jewelry. By the afternoon, the clouds rolled in and it started to pour.
The Sunday before I was to leave was the Cherry Creek Festival in Denver and of course, we had to go to that as well. My dad wandered off on his own and my stepmother and I did our own thing. I ended up buying a really cool glass sculpture from this artist who looked like James Earl Jones. I now want to go to more arts festivals.
So, that was the trip. I had a really great time and marvel at how well I can hang with my dad and stepmother and how much I enjoy them. When I visit my mother, I dread it because we usually end up fighting about something. I came back very relaxed, which was good because work unleashed its fury and I did something like 60 hours in four days.
As I’ve probably mentioned, my sister and nephew live in Parker and since my nephew is the only grandkid that doesn’t have four legs and fur, my parents bought a second home in Highlands Ranch so they could watch the little guy grow up. Or see the various stages his hair goes through. My sister loves styling the kid's hair and now he's into it too. He's five. He knows hair gel.
Every 4th of July, I fly to Denver to hang for as much time as work can spare but unfortunately, the 4th happens at a very bad time at work so I can only manage about five days and three of those are weekend/holiday. I love going out there at that time because my parent’s townhouse is right on the Town Center and there’s a very cheesy but fun parade that goes right in front of their house. Also, they are higher up than Denver so from their spacious front porch, we can watch the HR fireworks as well as see the fireworks all the way down to where the Rockies play. It’s just very cool and makes a holiday I had grown to not like very enjoyable. My dislike of the 4th has to do with the fact that we are densely populated and yet, VA does not ban the sale of fireworks nor do they ban setting off fireworks in city limits. So, after catching a couple of idiot kids about to fire off a string of fireworks near the gas tank of my car, and finding spent bottle rockets on the hood of my car, I decided I did not want to ever be home over the 4th.
I was very excited to go to CO this year, not only because it was my first real vacation in a year-and a very rough, stressful, year-but because my dad and I had made plans for a long horseback ride up a mountain. Originally, we were going to do an 8-hour ride over the Continental Divide however, we found out that we could only do that in August because there’s still too much snow in July. Ok, on to Plan B. Plan B was to ride up to the boulder fields of Longs Peak. We found out the day before our ride that because of the late snows, a lot of the passes were still blocked with snow packs. So now we were on to Plan C. Dad called (he was so in to doing this that he actually had a plan A, B and C) another place and found an 8 hour ride up Wild Basin to Thunder Lake, which is on the backside of Longs Peak. It didn’t have the cool factor of saying we rode horseback over the Continental Divide but riding up to a mountain lake, yeah, pretty awesome!
I arrived on Wednesday and immediately my stepmother, Sammie, was all excited to take me over to the new Whole Foods in Littleton, I think. I love Whole Foods. Could spend hours in the place and always drop some $$. This place was like…heaven. Seriously, I contemplated moving there just so I could visit this place every day. It was amazing!
Thursday we did a lot of hanging around and getting stuff together for the trip to Allenspark and the ride. It was just going to be me and my dad--no one else in the family has the love of horses that we have-and at first I was a little disappointed. I liked the idea of having the family along but we couldn’t get into the nicer lodges and my sister had to work. But this really worked out well because unlike my sisters and my dad, my dad and I have always gotten along very well, which is surprising given he and my mom divorced when I was 4 and I didn’t grow up around him. Then again, maybe that’s why we do get along. He and my sisters tend to argue a lot. When he’s being surly, they send me in to get him back in a good mood. Anyway, we drove up to Allenspark the night before the ride and had a reservation at the Sunshine Mountain Lodge.
When we found the place off the highway, we actually kept going. It took us a couple of passes before we sucked it up and accepted that we had no other place to stay. The place was nestled in the woods and very...rustic. I was even more worried when we pulled up and noticed an old out house on the grounds. But our cabin really wasn't that bad--if you could get past that it was one room with two beds, had one small bathroom, no TV, and came with a large colony of spiders and ants. When my dad and I got there, it was around 8pm. We both sat there and stared at each other then decided we'd walk up to the main house and watch some TV or something. We make the trek up down there and then sit in the living room and talk. It was nice but as we walked back to the cabin in the pitch black and nearly got lost, we realized we could have done that at the cabin.
We had the cabin on the end and reminded my dad and I of one of those places from the Friday the 13th movies. Yeah, between the spiders nesting above my head, the giant carpenter ant that was crawling on my arm, and the thought of Jason coming in to kill me, I didn't get much sleep that night. But the bed really was comfortable.
We got up at 6am but didn't have to be at the stables until 8am. Unfortunately, nothing near us was open for breakfast but we'd packed something just in case so breakfast for us consisted of very strong coffee, beef jerky and muffins from Whole Foods. The mountain air was crisp, the sun was shining from a cloudless blue sky, and it was so peaceful that off in the distance I could hear a rooster crowing. It was pretty awesome--except for the fact that I was dead tired from the two hours of sleep I'd gotten.
Allenspark is this little spit of a town that mostly consists of a stables, a lodge and a few houses. The night before, as we drove through the place, a guy came out of his cabin, bent down and yeah, full moon over CO. My dad laughed about that for days. We got to the stables a little early and were told that we needed to drive a little further down the road to the Wild Basin Stables. So down we went. Wild Basin was really pretty. The stables were small but there were about five of us going out that morning.
My horse, Thunder, was a paint who was kind of a celebrity. He'd been in the movie, Return to Lonesome Dove. My dad rode this huge, white draft horse named Gandolf.
Only my dad and I were doing the 8 hour ride so while we all saddled up together, the others headed off on a different path. For us, it was my dad, me and our guide, this woman whose name escapes me. But it was funny because she'd only been in CO a couple of months. Before then she'd been in Northern VA and knew all the places we knew and went to school about a mile from my house. Very small world. Definitely made for a bonding moment as well.
That's my dad and our guide. I was bringing up the rear on the ride up.
The ride up was beautiful.
The trail was rocky.
And then there was the roar of water. We had to ford a couple of streams but the Calypso Cascades had a very nice wooden bridge. You'll see why.
On the way up we passed this sign. It just made me laugh.
Unfortunately, we did not pass one llama on the way.
Did I mention the rocky trail? Rocky trails aren't so bad going up. Coming down is the butt breaker.
When we finally reached our destination, we had to tie up the horses at the top of the trail and then hike down to the very small ranger's cabin near the lake. I'd like to say we were the only three people up there because the only way to get to Thunder Lake is horseback, hike, helicopter but when we arrived, there was this one hiker, out on the snow bank, taking pictures. Yes, he immediately started chatting up our guide.
And once we hiked down the trail, this was the prize: Thunder Lake. It's at 10,500 ft and it was beautiful!
See the snow?
I launched a couple of snowballs at my dad. First time I've ever thrown a snowball in July. There was lots of snow still up there and along the way, as we got closer to the lake, we went through a few snow packs on the trail. Besides the snow, the things that stuck out to me were the peacefulness and the air. The only sounds you hear are the rustling of the trees. No birds, no planes, no cell phones (no cell phone towers or telephone lines). It was just pure. And the air. Wow, the air was pristine and crisp and what air should be.
We had lunch on the porch of the cabin and then took about an hour to get our land legs back, take pictures and explore the lake, then pee behind the cabin before saddling up and heading back. Let me just say that the ride up was very pleasant. The ride back, not so much. My horse was not as sure-footed as the two bigger horses so he tended to slide down the rocks a little. And when we came to the steps, he would hesitate and then jump down. Let me just say, this does a number on the butt. I didn't take a lot of pics on the way back but the guide took this one of my dad and I crossing the bridge over Ouzel Falls.
It was very sunny and shifted between hot and cold on the ride up. On the ride back, the clouds started to roll in and by the time we came off the mountain, it was raining. We put on our rain gear and galloped a bit once we hit the flat, grassy land but it was pouring and we got drenched. By the time we got back to the stable, we were soaked and cold and tired and sore and smelled of horse but both my dad and I said we'd definitely do it again. Hell, he was trying to convince me to come out again in August so we could do the Continental Divide ride.
We drove back to Highlands Ranch and actually had a great laugh about the last day and a half. We even plotted how we could commit a murder and hide a body on the mountain. That still makes me laugh. Even though we were still in our wet clothes and pretty scuzzy from being on a horse all day (and I had terrible hat hair), we contemplated heading into Boulder so we could eat at our favorite brew pub but the call of a hot shower was stronger so that's what we did. I never slept so hard in my life. But I have to say the trip was great on so many levels. I got to do this one thing with my dad. Just the two of us. And it was awesome. It's a happy memory I'll cherish forever.
For the 4th we did the usual watch the parade, eat all day, watch fireworks at night thing. My sister's BF came over with his two boys and my cousin I haven't seen in 22 years came by. It was great to see him and since he's a chef and I'm a foodie, we had the best conversation.
The next day we drove up to Breckenridge to an art show, which was really fun. We ate on the back deck of this restaurant and the view of the mountains and the weather was awesome! My dad has taken up painting in his older age and loves to hit the art shows. He goes off and looks at paintings; my stepmother and I go off and look at jewelry. By the afternoon, the clouds rolled in and it started to pour.
The Sunday before I was to leave was the Cherry Creek Festival in Denver and of course, we had to go to that as well. My dad wandered off on his own and my stepmother and I did our own thing. I ended up buying a really cool glass sculpture from this artist who looked like James Earl Jones. I now want to go to more arts festivals.
So, that was the trip. I had a really great time and marvel at how well I can hang with my dad and stepmother and how much I enjoy them. When I visit my mother, I dread it because we usually end up fighting about something. I came back very relaxed, which was good because work unleashed its fury and I did something like 60 hours in four days.