Our fourth, and final trip for July was a split ticket. Matt and Ben went on their annual Boys Backpacking Trip and Tabby and I took the ladies to Vail.
Gram had just passed away and it felt oddly appropriate to be going there with friends to relax and reflect. I also brought a laptop full of scanned photos to turn into a memorial slideshow (linked in the last post).
Not all of the crew was able to join us on Friday, but myself, Kelly and the other Jess (Mitch as she’s called), headed out Friday. We made dinner, put the girls to bed and went to bed ourselves (everyone was exhausted!).
The next morning we got up bright and early to hike to Nolan Lake in the Holycross wilderness. This is the same hike Matt and I did a few years back on our anniversary and we were auditioning it for our final backpacking trip of the year.
It was an absolutely beautiful hike.
Tons of wildflowers. Everywhere.
EVERYWHERE! Also beautiful mountains…
And interesting flora. We called this guy the impressionist log.
The only bad part about the hike was that it was BUGGY. This is not a CO thing. But we must have all killed about 1000 mosquitos and buzzy stingy flies over the course of our 6+ miles. And unfortunately, after all that, we didn’t make the lake. We were close, but exhausted.
So exhausted. And we needed to go home. So we did.
It was overall a great weekend and so good to spend time with just my little girl. Love that kid.