Colorado

I know that I'm in trouble for taking a while to write here. I just hadn't sat still enough to download my pics from the Colorado trip in May until now. I went with my friend, Lisa, who lives in Victoria. We both drove to Spokane, Washington where I left my car and we drove down to Colorado. We did a very long day of driving the second day to get to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. There was still lots of snow to do a lot of hiking with no snowshoes, but we did some along with some riding. The road through the park is the highest road in the continental US. It was to be fully opened at the end of the week so we couldn't go though it with all the snow still.



Estes Park is the town by the park and known for weddings there as it is really pretty. Elk were everywhere including this really big one with really big antlers!!



After a couple of days there, we drove down to Edwards which is near Vail to stay with a friend of Lisa's. We spent the next day riding part of the Copper Triangle Ride which is a very popular ride, but very tough. Beautiful, but a climb up a pass!! The Vail area a great, but getting to be touristy. Didn't have any Trista and Ryan (from the Bachelorette) sightings :)



We, then, drove up and over the Leadville area. This is above the tree line and the home of the most famous trail running race 100 miler at this elevation. Must be so very tough. Don't have any aspirations as this point to ever do it right now. I won't say never cause I seem to end up doing it then. There was snow driving there as we were up so high.

We got to Colorado Springs to the home of Pikes Peak. It's a well known hike/race there as it's over 14,000 ft and is on it's own with no snow in the summer so anyone can hike up there with no technical experience. We could only get up to 12,000 ft cause there was snow afterwards and we didn't bring any equipment for that. Beautiful hike, but don't need to do a straight up race for hours. I prefer a little more rolling terrain. Saw a unicyclist coming down - brave man! There was the combination of red rock and forest which was beautiful. Went around the Garden of the Gods rock formations - reminded me a little of Arches National Park in Utah.





We did have some relaxing time during this quick 10 days also, but we wanted to see lots the state. I would definitely go back. Lisa wants to move there at some point. Lisa was continuing her trip from there and I flew back to Spokane.