Colorado Vacation - Part 1

So...I'm a horrible blogger. I know. I need to be better about giving updates and posting pictures. I have tons of pictures to post of our Colorado vacation but...ya know. God gave us a wonderfully relaxing yet adventurous trip that helped to refuel us for our busy lives here in Texas. Here's a quick overview of how the trip went with a few pictures from my cellphone as a preview of what's to come.

Kyle and I left early (5:30am) Saturday morning and drove straight through to Colorado, reaching our destination at about 6:30pm. The drive through Texas was barren of any good scenery (sorry to those people who live in Northwest Texas...your portion of the state is just not aesthetically pleasing...you can't help that).

(notice the barrenness in the background...a very desolate drive except for the cute little prairie dog I saw!)

New Mexico was prettier but very sparsely populated, except for the pronghorn antelope. Amazing. I don't think I'd ever seen one before and it was nearly the highlight of my trip (yep, I'm still a Biology nerd at heart). We stayed in the Marriott Mountain Valley Lodge and saved a bunch of money by cooking nearly every meal there. I have more pictures of the scenery from my camera but here are a few from my phone (you know, the one I got for a penny).



(Notice the difference between the first picture of Kyle in this post and this one)

Here's a run down of the week:
Sunday: Church in Denver at Riverside Baptist with Pastor Jim Shaddix followed by a Denver Rockies game against the Mets (the Rockies won)

Monday: Hiking at St. Mary's Glacier. Snow everywhere but it wasn't that cold.

Tuesday: Georgetown Loop train ride and silver mine tour

Wednesday: Ended up hiking up to about 13,000 feet elevation on Quandary's Peak when we wanted to be on McGullough Gulch. Lotsa snow+no snowshoes=soggy feet. The quotable conversation of the trip had to have happened that day. I was worried about the quickly approaching clouds; Kyle was worried about mountain lions and then later, black bears.

Kyle: What do we do if a mountain lion attacks?

Rachel: I don't know. I guess we fight back or climb a tree or something.

Kyle: Don't worry. I'll fight for you.

Thursday: White Water Rafting on Clear Creek, the same creek where they get the water for Coor's Beer (so our guide said).

Friday: Hiking on the Mohawk Lake trail with snowshoes. I still ended up with soggy feet. I have two hilarious videos of Kyle from this trip...well particularly one. I'll have to post it later.

Saturday: Drove home all day but stopped at Capulin Volcano in New Mexico. Kyle was a little disappointed that is was all grown up inside but we did get to see free range cattle.

And now to wrap up with my favorite picture of the trip: