we've been traveling...

well hello there! we made it to our destination, the great state of Colorado! we are blessed and lucky to have family here, so we spent the first few days with them to get adjusted to the altitude. which didn't effect any of us in a negative manner... maybe we were MEANT to be here! i did spend some of my childhood here.... maybe that helped? i don't know what zach's excuse would be... he's a low-altitude southern boy through and through. but everyone did great!

We didn't want to do anything too crazy the first day here, so we went to the Zoo with my aunt Sally :). and don't let anyone fool you about Colorado being all cool in the summer. it was hotter than home. good lord.

we met cousin Sofie and her boys Ezra and Eliot there too! Ezra is the little guy below. I didn't ask permission to put his sweet little face on this blog, so you can look at his back. But let me tell you... his resemblance to my pete is crazy. like kinda spooky. love it.

artistic genius at work...
Once we felt that we were in the clear in terms of altitude, we ventured out a bit. I love this little slice of Colorado, so off we went to check it out. Our plan was to just walk around a little and explore.
So we paid some big bucks to enter the Rocky Mountain (State? National?) Park. Pure gorgeous.
Here's where the unexpected happened. We were going to just park and take a shuttle to stroll around Bear Lake, which has a happy, easy little family trail around it. As fate would have it, we parked right next to this little trailhead saying that another lake was 1.6 miles away. No families were heading that direction. This is where Zach and I think alike (this doesn't always happen). We said "screw the little family trail! Our kids can do this! we've trained them! who cares if we're at 9,000 feet! let's go for it!"... and we did! and yep, it was 1.6 miles straight up a freakin mountain in COLORADO!

(check out the wimpy southern girl in a fleece)

And OH MY GOSH, they did it. Our kids are freakin' genius hiking rock stars. Even sweet little Sammy... we only carried him a fraction of the time. They were unbelievable! we took a few water breaks but honestly they powered through. I was a little short-of-breath but adjusted pretty quickly. The stunning views helped more than anything... we were all in heaven! Our kids made enough insane noises to keep the bears away, so I never worried about that :).

And we hiked our way up to some snow!
And then, like a scene out of a movie, THIS is where our trail ended:

Seriously. Is there anything more beautiful... the pictures, of course, don't do it justice. But that 1.6 miles back down the trail were full of whoops and hollars because were were on cloud nine after seeing that view.

Here's the trail sign, just in case you thought I was making it up :). Don't worry, we didn't bring our horses.
Then, on the way back we took this amazing route through Boulder Canyon, and this was the lake in Nederland (I think that's the town?).
You know what else? People live here. Holy cow. I lived in Colorado Springs for a long time. Still stunned that this exists. Pure magic.

We're continuing our great tour of this lovely area... including more exploration of Boulder and surrounding areas in the coming days. I'll try to keep posting! Oh how I love to travel...