Dear Erin,
Happy Earth Day – belatedly – back! I loved your conversation with Munchkin, and I’m looking forward to something similar one of these days. Right now, Little Mister’s skills in that area are somewhat lacking. He does like to hold things out to us and say something that sounds like, “I got, got, got!” And we say, “Yes, you’ve got it!” back.
But that’s about it. Instead of talking, he’s currently much more into filling up the big box of baby Legos and then dumping them on himself. Today, he kept putting the blocks in and then tipping the box over into his lap, but there weren’t enough in there to spill out on him so he had to right the box, put more in, and try again.
So, let’s go back to Colorado. We had stayed in Vail, at a very nice hotel for a very decent price. We had almost the whole place to ourselves because it was almost the end of the skiing season: they were closing the slopes the following weekend (actually, that would be this past weekend), and they were looking a little ragged, so there were only a few diehards around. It was perfect for us, because we weren’t there to ski, and it was warm enough to walk around comfortably with no wait for anything and the hot tub to ourselves (after LM was in bed). It felt a little like going to Disney in January – perfect!
On Tuesday, we drove about an hour further west to a trail that started next to the Colorado River and went up for a little over a mile to a place called Hanging Lake.
Doesn’t this just look like THE WEST?
Here’s the river. See how flat it was? This is what I had originally anticipated the whole hike being like. Carrying a baby for a mile on this kind of terrain? No problem.
But this is where we ended up. We came up through that canyon. Amazing view, right? Wonderful! And better because Charles carried LM the vast majority of the way. I had him for a little bit, but not much. So almost right behind me as I took this picture was the lake, which had a waterfall.
Charles took the little one back down, too, and managed to do so without killing either one of them, for which he got a big kiss from me at the bottom because there were some pretty steep parts. I did, however, manage to relax enough to take the obligatory picture of a flower along the way.
Cell phone picture, though, so not as good as I would have liked.
You can see from the pictures that it was warm enough for short sleeves and just a light hoodie for LM, but on Wednesday morning, the temperature dropped significantly, and the rumor of snow chased us back to Denver. We only stopped once on the way back, at a scenic overlook.
A cold scenic overlook. What I most remember about it were the bullet holes in the informational sign. I guess someone pulled off for the scenery, wasn’t impressed enough, and emptied their shotgun into the sign in retaliation? Nice to know there are rednecks in every state.
The snow followed us to Denver.
This was the view on Thursday morning. So, since we weren’t flying out until Saturday, and our friends left Thursday morning, we had a very quiet, restful couple of days for the remainder of our vacation. The snow eventually cleared up, we did visit a museum, and a fantastic restaurant or two (this last I mostly like because it makes me think about visiting you!).
And then we headed on home. A good time with a little bit of everything, and starting to learn how to vacation with the LM. If nothing else, we found out that it’s best to try to plan long drives for his nap times!
crackersisters 