We completed another week in our #52hikechallenge2017 as well as another portion of the East/West Trail. We try to break it up in sections that are about 2-4 miles in length since we are each hiking with a kid on our back (or front) and we have 3 mini-hikers walking on their own. Our general rule of thumb is to go only as far in miles as the youngest hiker's age, which would mean 4.5 miles since Ava is 4 1/2.
The East/West Trail is about 19 miles long from one end to the other. Because we are breaking it into segments, we hike out and back in portions, and thus will end up completing the trail two times over when we finish. Chris looks at a rough map and mostly has to give an educated guess about how far the segments we break it up into are. You never know if the trail will be fairly straight or if it will have a bunch of switchbacks and curves. The elevation gain is also a bit of a guess.
On this particular hike, our educated guesses were inaccurate because the trail had both more elevation gain than expected and more switchbacks (and thus was much longer). So a hike that we thought would be about the length of our previous hike (which was over 4.5 miles) ended up being about 5 1/2 miles long and was steeper than expected too. It wasn't a mountain, but it certainly had plenty of hills. And it was the middle of the afternoon and quite warm that day, and the hike had no shade. Needless to say, we were all pretty worn out by the end of it, and there was more whining than usual especially the last mile, mile and half.
But we pressed on and finished.
And for most of the hike, we had a really nice time. The girls chatted and skipped along. At one point, I got a little behind taking a couple snapshots of the amazing (those shots are completely unfiltered) sky. When I caught back up, Chris and the girls were singing "I've got the joy, joy, joy, down in my heart..."
Near the beginning of the hike, we passed some very large, lovely homes. As we came around a curve, there were two especially impressive ones, and Chris jokingly commented, "Hey look, there's our new house!" Kayla looked up and replied, "Which one? The castle or the mansion?"
Either one. ha.
This picture doesn't do either justice. They were huge and beautiful and WOW!
And there were prairie dogs (loud ones!!) everywhere along the middle of the hike. The picture above on the right is one popping out of his hole.
Afterward, Chris and I dropped the kids off at a friend's for an hour and popped by a local brewery (it was craft brew beer week in the Denver area) for a refreshing Belgian cherry beer (I forget what Chris had). We also picked up the souvenir glasses (the ones without beer in them). Kolbe got to come along and be the third wheel. Thanks, Megan and Peter!
The same friends even had us for dinner when we went to pick the kids up. We sure love our Colorado community!
It's so red it almost looks like wine! That was a fun night :)
ReplyDelete