Fourth of July Visitors

We had some visitors for the week of July 4th – Andy’s Mom, his sister Carol, niece Stephanie, and her boyfriend Evan.  We had a grand time.  I’m pretty sure we all left each other exhausted by the end of the week.  But, that’s how we like to spend our vacations – cramming as much fun stuff in as possible!

Here’s a quick summary of some of our activities during their stay:

Eldorado Canyon State Park – we took a short hike along the creek in Eldorado Canyon to show off the beautiful rock formations, colors, and the rock climbers in one of our closest parks…

Look closely, and you’ll see at least four rock climbers…

Colorado Rockies Game – We went to a Rockies game Friday night.  We stopped at Wynkoop Brewery before the game…

Here’s the gang before entering Coors Field…

Lots of spectators file onto the field after the game in preparation for the evening’s firework show…

We enjoyed a fantastic fireworks show post-game.  What a way to prepare us for the Fourth of July!

Mt Evans -  On Saturday we enjoyed a scenic drive that looped us through Idaho Springs – Mt Evans – Evergreen – Morrison.

Here’s Steph and Carol at Echo Lake

A old, gnarled bristlecone pine tree.  The Alpine Garden on Mt Evans Road has some Bristlecone Pine Trees that are thousands of years old

Summit Lake on Mt Evans Road

Andy pretends he’s a Big Horn Sheep

View of a chain of lakes from the pass on the trail at Summit Lake

We got to watch a family of mountain goats on the Summit Lake trail

And we made it to the top of Mt Evans!

Evan and I took the trail to the summit itself for even more spectacular views

Just to prove Evan and I made it the 14,264’ summit, we took pictures of each other at the marker.

On our return trip, we stopped at Red Rocks in Morrison to show off our own little “Garden of the Gods”

We were fortunate that the rains didn’t come til the end of our scenic drive…and ended the day with a stunning double rainbow.

Fourth of July from our Balcony – the city fireworks display was set off right across the street from our home, which was one of the reasons we had our guests come for this holiday.  We thought it would be great fun to ‘cook out’ and not have to leave the house for the fireworks.  It was a windy, rainy day.  (Which is becoming a ritual whenever Andy wants to cook outside on our grill!)  Andy was a dedicated griller, though, and still cooked outside.  Surprisingly, the fireworks were set off as scheduled and we enjoyed the show – huddled in jackets with embers falling on our heads.

Glenwood Springs – On July 5th we took everyone up to Glenwood Springs for an overnight trip into the mountains.

Of course, the primary draw were the springs themselves…

But we also wanted to take the Tram up Iron Mountain and visit the Glenwood Caverns.

This picture shows the big swing and how it swings out over the edge of the cliff…and still the foursome in our group decided it would be fun to do?

The Glenwood Caverns

Carol, Andy, Steph and Evan tackle the Big Swing…I didn’t think it would be good for the little Tater Tot if I tried doing something like this (quite a bit of pressure on the belly area on this ride!)

It was a scenic drive on the way home (especially through the Glenwood Canyon area), but some of our group missed part of the beautiful drive…

We had to stop in Vail to “refuel” at a Starbucks and/or ice cream.  I hadn’t been to Vail before, so I wanted to check it out.  We saw enough of the downtown shops to know I want to go back for a longer visit!

Beautiful flowers in Vail…

It was a great visit, and now I’m sure you can see why we were all exhausted by the end of the week, right?