Matt and I have a fabulous history of doing very little for our anniversaries. Gifts according to the fun materials schedule? Nope. Dinners out? Err … maybe once? But this was #10 so we were determined to do something! We had to reschedule … twice … but we did finally make it on our weekend. And it was wonderful!
We headed out for Vail after dropping the kids off on Friday AM. We had lunch (sushi!) and hit the grocery store for some provisions. Then we had a lovely nap, walked around the town and did a little shopping. Then we went back to the condo and made a simple dinner and chilled out with some Netflix.
The next morning we set out for our hike! It is so rare we get to do a “real” hike these days (we’re usually greatly limited by length and terrain) and we were really excited to get out and go. We picked Nolan Lake, a reasonable hike, 6 mi round trip and punctuated by a ghost town and a couple of waterfalls.
The first thing we saw was this make-shift stretcher discarded at the trailhead. Errr … that’s a bit off-putting. But of course in for a penny in for a pound, right?
The morning was cool and for a while I wished for jeans, but it soon warmed up. 1/4 mile in, we saw the remnants of the ghost town, which were neat.
We hiked on and enjoyed the pretty scenery. We only saw one other person the entire trip, so all of our self-portraits are timer-taken.
About 1.5 miles in, we crossed over into the Mount Holy Cross Wilderness area. Before we entered we had to sign in with the forest service. It gave us a moment’s pause because my cousin was lost in the Mount Holy Cross Wilderness area 7+ years ago and never found. It was a vastly different area and under totally different circumstances, but sobering nonetheless.
As we went further along the trail, we came to the two promised waterfalls. They were both breathtaking. The first is the one pictured above, with many cascading stairsteps and some pretty little ponds below. The second (my photos did NOT come out) was over a flat sloped rock, like a wide slide. It was really neat looking.
We hiked on, keeping a pretty good pace and before we knew it we were upon the lake. But just before we got there, we saw the most amazing collection of mushrooms! These guys were 8+ inches in diameter and speckled. These were actually just some of the TONS of mushrooms we saw on this hike and we nicknamed the area Mushroom Kingdom (ala Mario Bros), but some of the coolest.
The lake was a pretty little alpine lakes surrounded by pretty meadows. It may be the scene of our first backpacking trip with the kids. There are apparently abundant trout in the lake as well.
We sat on a rock and had a snack and took in the scenery. It was beautiful and peaceful and very nice.
After our break, we headed back out. By the time we were back to the car, it was almost 2 and our snack was wearing pretty thin so we started looking for a snack. We had seen Moe’s Original BBQ in town so we stopped and split a pulled pork sandwich and a few of their super tasty sides.
After showers and a nap and some relaxing, we headed off to our dinner reservations at Kelly Liken. We were super excited to try this one. Kelly Liken was a top chef contestant and we were not disappointed! The food was sublime and perfectly prepared. We had a wonderful meal with wonderful service.
All too soon our fun had to come to an end. We left early to avoid the ridiculous I-70 Sunday traffic and we were back in reality. But there’s no place like home and it was great to come home to our kiddos.