We Heart Colorado!

The first week in August we took a trip to Colorado. Our friends Andy, Leigh, & Benjamin Russell invited us to join them & have a joint family vacation. Andy has a work associate that owns a cabin in Granby where we could stay & the price was right. Josh & I were able to cash in some credit card points so we only had to purchase 1 plane ticket instead of 4. The week before we were to depart we found out some bad news...the cabin we were planning on using had the water system malfunction & we would not be able to stay there. Slight panic on our part (our tickets were non-refundable) but then we remembered that Andy is a champ at finding good deals & he & Leigh are as budget conscious as we are. Sure enough, after scouring the Internet & finding several options we landed a great cabin, also in Granby, for the same price...thanks to Andy & his negotiations with the owner. We set our for Charlotte to fly to Denver.

Josh & I had done some creative packing & managed to get our checked bags down to 1 & carry everything else on. However, once we had everything in the den ready to load into the cruiser we realized that we were going to have to carry everything & there was no way we could cart it all through the airport. So, some repacking & now with 2 checked bags our carry-ons seemed more manageable. Nevertheless we did look like a couple of Sherpas carting all of our stuff through Charlotte Douglas. Just to give you an idea...we each had a child carrier on our backs (with Sam & Troy in them), each of us carried a car seat (we decided not to check them reasoning that our boys would do better on the flight in familiar seats), I had my purse & Troy's backpack, Josh had Sam's backpack, his daypack, & a duffel bag. Aunt Z wanted to follow us through the airport just to get pictures of us going through security.

We made it to our flight & got the kids settled. They LOVED take-off. I think everyone around us was cracking at how much Sam & Troy were enjoying themselves.

We met the Russells in Denver & went to Wendy's for lunch. After a stop at Wal-Mart to get our food for the week we made it to our cabin.

This was the view off the back deck. Amazing!

We settled in & the next morning made our way to Rocky Mountain National Park for day 1 of hiking. Getting all the kiddos strapped into their packs.

Fixin' to hike into the park.

Adam's Falls...not as impressive as Whitewater Falls here in the upstate but the rest of the scenery more than made up for it.

Beautiful meadow we hiked through. The picture really doesn't do it justice...so breathtaking.

Check out how impressed Benjamin is with the view!

Our lunch spot...

Our packs got a lunch break too...I can't speak for everyone else, but I felt like a pack mule.

Sam, our happy hiker.

On the hike out we met another group that warned us there was a female moose just off the trail ahead. I was in the lead (the slowest person gets to lead out...I was in front a lot!) & saw the moose cross the trail about 30 yards in front of me. I quietly spazzed out. "M-M-Moose!"

There is no way to convey how HUGE she was. As close as she was to the trail & us we were thankful that it wasn't a male & that she didn't have a foal with her...could have been trouble.

Our cabin was actually in a ski resort. During the off-season they run the main ski lift for mountain bikers. So after we got back & a bit rested we headed over to the lift to check it out for ourselves.

If I wasn't such a dork I would have made sure the tiger paw was pointed the correct way. Oh well...no Clemson World picture for us!

The view from the top of the slope. Josh & Andy got a better look at it...Benjamin had a shoe come off on the ride up so the husbands walked down the slope to find it while Leigh & I took the kids down on the lift.