One highlight was a horseback riding trip. Mikayla and Luka absolutely loved it. It was about an hour long ride through the forest, across creeks, up and down hill. Scott, TJ, Mark, and Ryan kept meeting up with up with us along the way while they were mountain biking, so the kids had fun with that. My horse kept getting all up in Luka's horse's YouKnowWhat and they thought that was hilarious.
The next day we took a trip to town to the Famous Stanley Hotel. This is where scenes from Dumb and Dumber were filmed. We took a ton of pictures, because it is not uncommon for ghosts to show up in your pictures! Unfortunately, I don't think we captured any that day, but we had fun trying. The kids were very intrigued by the ghost stories, nonetheless, and of course that raised a lot of questions about the spirit world and generated lots of good discussion too.
After Estes Park, we descended down from the mountains toward the Bonniwell's house just outside of Denver in Highland's Ranch. We had a very enjoyable time just relaxing, riding bikes on the trails, cooking out, and hanging out.
We did make sure to hit Red Rocks, and though it was pretty hot, we got in one last hike of the trip.
Our last and final day in Colorado, we had two destinations on the itinerary: Garden of the Gods, and Pike's Peak. At Garden of the Gods, it was hot, and quite frankly we were all pretty tired, so we made a good tour in the van and got out to snap a few pictures, but otherwise didn't have much energy to do more than that. I like the picture of the kids admiring the "Kissing Camels."
Last but certainly not least, we headed towards one of the most famous peaks...that of Pike. We had reserved a trip on the cog rail train, a trip that we will not soon forget. Since 1891, the world’s highest cog railway ascends Pikes Peak, 14,115 feet. The train winds past waterfalls, through aspen and pine forest, and it has breathtaking views. You start out at the base of the mountain and in the forest, until 1 hour later you find yourself above the tree line and you can see for miles. It was an amazing day weather wise - warm and clear, and we took it all in. We even treated ourselves to the most famous donuts in the world prepared at 14,115 feet.
Once the train returned, it was about 5:00 in the evening. We had debated about whether or not to get a hotel, or rather just jump in the car and start driving south. We opted for the latter; it jut felt like way too much work to try to unload all our crap one...more...time...as opposed to just pushing through and having the day at home the next day. But it was really up to Scott, because I know I cannot program myself to "just stay awake" like he can. So we pulled out the pillows, Scott stopped for coffee and sunflower seeds and got his music all set up, and we hit the road. Our final view that evening got our trip started off in the right way.
Scott made it until 6:00 a.m. when I took over, and we pulled into our driveway at 9:30, just 13 days after our trip began. Colorado vacation 2015!
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