Copeland Falls, Calypso Cascades, and Ouzel Falls

July 17, 2011

I would rate this trail pretty high on the difficulty to scenery scale.  Roundtrip this trail is about 6.5 miles and it's easy in the beginning but gets a little steep just past Calypso Cascades.  It's not a hard trail and we got to see three beautiful waterfalls!

Copeland Falls

The first waterfall is only .2 miles into the trail.  It's Copeland Falls.  Considering the amount of snow the mountains had this past winter I bet this waterfall isn't typically this raging, but it was still beautiful.

Calypso Cascades

Calypso Cascades is the next waterfall we came to.  No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the entire cascades into one picture.  This is the best I could do.  Across this waterfall is a cute wooden bridge that made for perfect pictures above the falls.

The final waterfall, and the end of the one way trail is Ouzel falls.  Again, I couldn't get the whole view into one picture, but it's tough to take a bad picture when this is your scenery.

I enjoyed this hike very much.  It's on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park so the elevation is pretty low, which makes it a hike you can get to easily.

Arches National Park, Moab UT - Best Trip So Far!!!

Memorial Day Weekend 2011

Delicate Arch

This is not a photograph out of a magazine or photoshopped, this is a picture I took with my little point and shoot camera.  This formation is called Delicate Arch.  It's the most popular destination in Arches National Park, so of course it was a busy trail, but well worth the 1.5 mile strenuous hike to get there.  This hike is ROUGH!  Straight up the side of slick rock and along some very narrow cliffs.  We got to the park at sunset, which put a beautiful orange glow on the rest of the park.  I wish we could have seen this arch at sunset, but the drive along with the difficult hike made the trip too long to get there that early.  Still, can't beat this view!  

After this hike we kept going, approximately 8 miles along other hikes.  These are just a few placed we saw:

Petroglyphs

Me in Front of Unnamed Arch

Landscape Arch

Pine Tree Arch

Double Window Arches

North and South Windows

Double Arch

Rich and Me in Front of South Window

Colorado Monument National Park & Grand Junction

Memorial Day Weekend 2011

This park was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!  The views are spectacular and you feel like you're driving on the rim of the world.

Colorado Monument National Park is located near Fruita in Western Colorado.  Rim Rocks Scenic Byway was on our list of things to do in Colorado and it's located in this park.  All along this beautiful drive you are above canyons and fascinating rock formations.  

Independence Monument 

This is Independence Monument, the center of the park.  It's a spectacular rock formation in the middle of a huge canyon.  Absolutely breathtaking and the first rock formation you see along the Rim Rock Drive.

Devil's Kitchen

There are several hikes along Rim Rock Drive.  We stopped and took in a few, but my favorite was the hike to Devils' Kitchen rock formation.  It's towards the other side of the park and I would call it an easy to moderate hike.  Along the trail we saw lots of lizards!  You have to hike up rock slabs to get into the formation but once you get to Devils' Kitchen you can climb around inside it and the views are amazing!  I love to scramble up and down rocks so I really enjoyed this trail, and the whole park!

It's a definite must see in Colorado!!!

After the long day of playing on the rocks we decided to take in some of Colorado's wine country in Grand Junction.  We visited several wineries in Grand Junction and the Palisades and tasted many wines.  All of which were so wonderful!  My favorite wine was from Whitewater Hills Winery, but they do not offer tours.  We toured Grand River Winery, which offered a very nice tour, but the wine wasn't as good.  Then we ended the day at Two Rivers Winery, which by far has the best views to enjoy while sipping wine but again, not my favorite wine.  We ended up leaving Grand Junction with four bottle of wine that day.  It was a fun trip!

Two Rivers Winery

Poudre Canyon

March 18-20, 2011

This trip started out rocky.  The cabin we were supposed to stay in at State Forest State Park was completely buried in the snow.  We were not aware that the roads would not be plowed in the winter, so we had to make a quick change of plans.

We drove back down to lower elevation in Poudre Canyon and found this little cabin available.  It actually worked out better.  We were on a mission to see a moose and kept hearing that State Forest State Park was the best place in Colorado to spot one.  We must have drove up and down Cameron Pass 5 or 6 times, not to mention we drove all the way to Walden.

Finally, we had given up and driving back to the cabin I glanced towards the river and there he was.  We finally got to see a moose!  They are interesting creatures, so cool to look at.  Mission accomplished!

Breckenridge, Frisco, & Keystone - Skiing

February 18-21, 2011

Well, we tried skiing back in February.  It went about how I thought it would, but the good news is I came home without any broken bones.  Breckenridge, Frisco, and Keystone are all really neat little towns.  Skiing is the main attraction, obviously, but we managed to find plenty of other things to keep us occupied.

Rich Skiing

Angie Skiing

First we tried skiing.  We took the all day lessons offered through Breckenridge.  Skiing is NOT a cheap sport, but I will admit that I enjoyed it for the first 3-4 hours.  Beyond that it hurts, and I was cold, and I fell off the lift.
This is me pretending to fall, which I actually ended up doing several times along the way.  Luckily, Rich didn't have the camera. Rich did much better than I did.  It was a good day though and I'm glad I can say we tried it!

Rich Snowshoeing

Dad Snowshoeing

 Rather than skiing again we found a snowshoe trail.  The Keystone Nordic Center has well maintained trails and it was really easy.  The scenery around there along the way was amazing!!!

     

 
So skiing and snowshoeing are fun, but the best thing you can ever try in the snow is tubing!  Frisco has an adventure park and we had a blast!  It's a little pricey to tube for an hour, but there is a belt that takes you back up the hill, so you get more time on the hill.  This was the most fun I've ever had playing in the snow!!!

Recommendation - The more tubes you can tie together the faster you will go down that hill.  We really got moving!!!

Dad, Rich, and I all going down together.  We went FAST!!!

Canyon Loop Trail, Boulder CO

January 29, 2011

Today we hiked the 3.2 mile Canyon Loop Trail.  Best things about this trail are it's close and we could take our dog Molly with us.  She had a great time!

This hike is west of Boulder off Canyon Loop Road on your way to Nederland.  It's a well known trail so we weren't the only hikers, but it's so spread out that you don't feel over crowded.  I recommend doing this trail on Saturday or Wednesday since bikes are not allowed on the trail on these two days and it looks like it might be a very popular mountain bike trail.  We may try that this summer!

When you start the trail you can go either direction.  We started to the right and this is the first beautiful view you see, looking over Boulder.  It's amazing.  The views throughout the trail are beautiful.







Canyon Loop Trail and Molly



The trail is steep in some places and narrow in others, but I would say all in all it's a mild trail and pretty easy to navigate.



The Family



Since it's January there was some snow and a few slick spots, but we had excellent weather for this hike. 

I highly recommend this hike.  It's not full of spectacular mountain views, or rushing waterfalls, but it's peaceful and you can bring your best friend for a long walk together.

Snow Shoeing & Sprague Lake

December 18, 2010

We tried to hike to Sprague Lake last weekend too but without snow shoes it was next to impossible to get to, so we tried again this weekend.  We had a fantastic time!

There is a small shop in Estes Park called The Warming House that rents snow shoes for only $8 per day!  Comes with shoes and poles.  We thought that was a great deal so we tried it out.  The snow shoes were in great condition and worked very well!

These are the snow shoes and poles we rented. We hiked around Sprague Lake and then took the trail from Sprague Lake to Glacier Creek Trail.  Round trip we probably did two miles on the snow shoes.  That may not sound like a lot but it was a work out!



Sprague Lake



This is Sprague Lake, frozen obviously.  I can imagine how beautiful this lake is in the summer time.  It was absolutely beautiful with the snow and the sun glistening off the lake. 

This trail is off of Bear Lake Road.  The trails in this area are almost the only ones accessible this time of year, and even they can be difficult to get to.  Bear Lake was pretty snow and ice covered, but we took the Subaru.

To get to Sprague Lake Trail head enter the park through the Beaver Meadows entrance and take Bear Lake Road just past the park and ride lot.  The next left will take you to the lake.  From that trail head you can walk the .5 miles around the lake or near the picnic area starts another trail that leads to the Glacier Creek Trail, which is what we took.

Glacier Creek Trail

This trail can be as long or as short as you're willing to hike or snow shoe.  I highly recommend this trail for snow shoeing.  I may not have any others to compare it to, but it's not a steep or highly traveled trail so it made for a perfect first time snow shoeing excursion.

It's a beautiful and peaceful trail, although there isn't anything spectacular to see along the way.  We still had a great time and really enjoyed the snow shoes!  We will definitely be doing it again so stay tuned!