Co Vacation Part 5: The Final Chapter

I can tell how inpatient I am waiting for pictures to load to the blog since it has taken 5 posts to cover a week of camping! Oh well, I took a lot of photos.  So we left off after our busy day in Telluride and awoke very well-rested the next morning, even sleeping in until 8:30!  Unheard of when camping for us.  We had a little breakfast than broke camp and began our long day of driving.  Our Tomtom (GPS) said it would take 8 hours to get to Colorado Springs, we assumed it was lying as it hadn't been that reliable during our "off the beaten path" adventuring.  We drove through some very pretty areas including Gunnison and the surrounding state parks. 

We discovered some very remote areas that may be fun to explore in the future as well.  The 6 hour drive (in your face Tomtom!) wasn't too bad, I'll take driving through the mountains for 6 hours over driving through Nebraska any day of the week.  We arrived at Eric's brother's home in Colorado Springs ready to stretch our legs and check our facebook and email that had been neglected for a week.  Oh, and it was also sort of a Lab party

The dogs definitely tired each other out!  We had a nice catch up with David and a nice hot shower in a real bathroom (rather than the campsite showers where you feel obligated to wear your flip flops dorm-room style!). 

The next day we packed up and headed out for our last official day of vacation.  Now, let me tell you the tale of Billy's.  We are from IL and WI, so if you are not familiar with the delicacy of a proper Italian Beef sandwich you are missing out on heaven.  We have not been able to find a replacement for this deliciousness in the 6 years we have been out here.  I do make it in the crock pot every now and again but it's just not the same.  We heard rumor of an all-you-can-eat Italian Beef restaurant down in Colorado Springs from a friend of our.  So, naturally, we were very eager to try this.  Now, we heard about this at least 4 years ago.  And every time we are down there visiting David we have tried to go.  What kind of restaurant is closed on Sundays and Mondays?!  We ran in to that problem a couple times, once they were close for remodel, and I think there were a couple other  random events that all worked against us getting our Italian Beef.  Well, not anymore. 

AND they had REAL Chicago-style deep dish pizza, the kind with the sauce on top.  It was worth the wait and we ate ourselves sick.  Thanks Billy's for living up to the hype!

We continued our brewery-visiting and discovered a real gem hidden in in the Springs.  It was called Rocky Mountain Brewing.  They don't distribute except from their tasting room, the assistant brewer was pouring our beer and getting all beer-geeky with Eric, and their brew was delicious and creative.  We really enjoyed ourselves there. 

I loved the warehouse views all around, very small-businessy feel.  Plus they welcomed Cassidy  in to the tasting room and spoiled her with dog treats made from their spent grains.  I absolutely recommend this brewery to fans in the area.  Bristol Brewing is also very good with good folks, but as we had already been there we had to visit somewhere new.

We decided to spend our last night a little pampered and got lucky with a Living Social deal at a lodge nearby in Monument.  We checked in to The Sundance Mountain Lodge  and were very enthralled by the quaint, locally-owned, establishment.  They had very environmentally -friendly policies, the rooms were comfy, clean, and had local art on the walls, and the grounds were very sweet with all sorts of fun little nooks, ponds, hammocks, statues, etc.  Best of all they had a pool and hot-tub which we immediatly enjoyed.  Come to find out while walking the dog there was a brewery right next door!  So we could walk and actually enjoy more than a taster or two! 

Pike's Peak Brewing also had a great atmosphere, obviously a local favorite.  They even had a rare style of beer on tap that Eric needed to study for his Cicerone certification!  We met some neat guys to chat with and their beers were also very solid.

We ended our evening at the  hotel bar and restaurant where we shared a yummy dinner (because we were still kind of full from Billy's) and listened to the karaoke that we were lucky enough to witness! 




We headed for home the next day but not without a stop at my favorite outlet mall on the way!  It was a great vacation and we already are planning were to visit next.  After 26hrs of driving, 1100 miles, 8 mountain passes, 5 different places to lay our head a night, and 5 breweries, it was good to be home. I think Stella may have missed us too

This would have been a better photo for the official "Hug Your Cat" day!

I could tell that our vacation was a success as I felt rested and ready to go back to work to see what I missed.  Now we are just gearing up for fall and football season as the nights get cooler and it's dark when I leave the house in the morning.  It's been a pretty busy summer and I can honestly say that it wasn't wasted at all, as we sometimes are left feeling that way since summer goes by so fast.  I hope all of your summers were also delightful and wish you a happy Fall to come.  And GO PACKERS!

Vacation Continued, Pt 4

Alright, so wrapping up our vacation...

We were spending the last mountain leg of our trip in the Telluride area, and as I previously stated, this area was amazing.  Probably my favorite.  The mountains were so different from "our" mountains and the area was much more remote with no major interstate going through.  Since we were robbed of a previous full hiking day we decided that this was our last chance.  There was actually a hiking trail adjacent to our campsite so we decided to start with that.  Well, when you have 0 information on a trail you are most likely going to be dissapointed.  When the trail finally started going through a residential bakyard we decided to turn back and find something else.  We again consulted our hiking books but most of the trails there were extremely long or required camping a night or two to finish.  So, we decided to bank on our close resources and ask our camp host who immediatly responded with "Cross Mountain", and it was just a few miles up the road!

Cross Mountain from afar

This trail was part of a larger trail system so there wasn't much info at the trail head regarding elevation gain, length, etc, but it looked to be 2-3 miles one way.  So we gave it a go.

This trail was hard.  I mean, HARD.  I don't know if it was the starting elevation of 10,000 ft or so, the fact that I had been "roughing" it the past few days, maybe I'm super out of shape and didn't realize it, or was "hangry", but I was not a pleasant hiking companion.  And to my husband, I apologize.  I would classify this hike as difficult to strenuous.  It was just straight up.  No meandering curves to give you a break, no meadows to frolic through, just straight up.  There were many a time I just wanted to turn around but I knew Eric wanted to try and finish and that I was being highly dramatic when I demanded to take the escalator.  We pressed on, even if I did have to stop every 10 minutes to give the dog a dirty look.  But when she collapsed in the shade at one of my many stops I didn't feel so bad about being tired myself

There weren't any good views during this torture either, it was just mountain forest.  Oh, wait, then there were views (as tends to happen with hiking trails).  And they were pretty spectacular.

As you can see, Eric forgave me for being such a crab-ass. And here's Cross Mountain up close

What's that you say?  It looks like a giant, what?  Yeah, heh-heh, we thought so too

I always appreciate a good phallic rock

Here are some more non-phallic mountain shots

Interesting terrain here, almost looks like lava

Ok, so the torture to see these views was kinda worth it.  I sure was happy to be at the bottom again!

That evening we took a much appreciated shower and decided to have dinner in Telluride and check out the little town.  It was adorable!  Not a single stop light and obviously a ski town.  Apparently the gondola to the top of the slopes is considered part of public transportation so can be ridden at no cost year round!  Since we had the dogbert we didn't get to go on it, but I thought it was neat.  And then there was this random guy set up in the middle of the street painting!

 We ate a local pizza shop and bakery that had lots of local flair and was delicious.  Then we, of course, located a brew-pub and sampled their wares

Tasters at Smuggler Joe's

Telluride was a lovely town nestled between giant mountains.  We hope to spend more time here in the future, maybe finally make it out for their famed Telluride Bluegrass Festival. 

That night we headed back to our campsite with bellies full and legs aching.  We had the last campfire of our trip and then turned in early to face a long day of driving as the next day we started to head for  home. 

Happy Friday!

Look what my husband brought home to celebrate the weekend!

Rather questionable considering I'll be working!  Oh, and the New Glarus peak was a lovely surprise from WI to celebrate his upcoming...DON, DON, DDDOOOOONNNNNNNN......30th BIRTHDAY!!

Look what else came in the mail to mark this momentous event

I figured the box would be big when I ordered the gift online, but not THIS big.  I had been contemplating hiding spots until I saw this monster on my doorstep when I got home and had to use proper lifting technique just to get the thing across our threshold.  I quickly decided that sharpie decorating in the front entryway would be as far as I would get with this baby.  Sorry Honey.  Anyway, Happy Friday, I hope your respective spouses brought home treats for you too!

But, wait, in all seriousness, I promise we do not plan to imbibe this much Fat Tire all on our own, we are headed to Phish next weekend with a group of 20 or so friends.  We much quench the thirst of the masses!

I've still got a post or 2 left on our vacation that I promise to post soon so stay tuned!

CO Vacation Part 3

As we left the Aspen/Carbondale area we headed southwest towards Telluride.  Since this vacation was about exploring we were pretty set on not taking the interstate routes and sticking to state highways through the mountains even though it may take a little longer.  The drive was beautiful and we stumbled upon some interesting parts of our lovely state.  One surprising feature that I, unfortunately, did not get photos of was an enormous coal mine nestled right between the mountains.  I'm talking giant.  The coal mounds appeared to be mountains themselves.  It was interesting to see the modern day equivelent of coal mines.

Continuing our drive we accidently found another lovely surprise, Colorado wine country!  I saw a sign for a vineyard and excitedely said "Oh can we stop!!"  This being a roadtrip the answer was, of course, yes!  We drove up a gravel, curvy, mountain road to a little vineyard called Stone Cellars.  And there it was!  The owner met us in the parking lot to greet us and offered us a tour of the vineyards and a tasting.  The wines were lovely and even more delicious since we could see the grapes that contributed to it.

There were actually quite a few other wineries right in that area (which is near Paonia, CO).  Since we were driving we only stopped at this one but I could definitely see spending a weekend here to visit more. 

The scenery just seemed to get better and better as we headed to our next destination.  Unfortunately it was rather hazy due to the massive wildfires in neighboring states so I'm sure the views would have been even better on a clear day.

This was the only leg of our trip that we didn't have reservations so we consulted our camping book and choose a campground about 10 miles outside of Telluride and were pleasantly surprised by the walk-in site that we stumbled upon with an unhindered view of the Matterhorn mountains.  

It was beautiful spot to say the least and recharged us after a long day of driving and other activities.  We were more than happy to build a campfire, have dinner, and enjoy some adult beverages by the fire and recharge for the next day's adventures. 

CO Vacation Part 2

The next day dawned in typical CO sunshiny fashion and we broke camp and hit the road towards our next destination.  We planned to spend 2 days in New Castle and hike the Maroon Bells near Aspen.  Here are a couple more scenery shots as the topography changed, sorry about the car reflections!

We reserved a cute little cabinlet for 2 days, realizing that 7 days of tent camping may be a little much.  Isn't it quaint?

This campground also had much appreciated showers and a stream bordering it so, of course, Cassidy got to get wet too. 

That night we enjoyed sleeping in a bed and awoke to (insert shocking voice) rain.  We had a little moment of, "hooray, we need the rain!", but elation faded as it just continued to rain.  All.  Day.  Long.  So there went our full day of hiking we had planned.  So, what do you do when the sun isn't sunny and it's too wet to play?  Find a local brewery of course!

We used this as a study opportunity for Eric (who is taking the certified Cicerone exam this fall, basically Sommolier for beer) as I hid the beers from him so he couldn't see the cheat sheet they rested on then made him guess which style was which.  He did pretty well!  And this Brewery (Glenwood Canyon Brewpub) was probably our favorite of all the ones we visited this trip with the most well-rounded beers. We then did some shopping in the downtown of Glenwood Springs and I found a couple cute things.  And it was still raining.  So we went back to our hobbit hut and thanked the vacation gods that we weren't tent camping these few days and also that we had a microwave.  And we made the best of it. 

Cassidy isn't the best Rummy partner

The rain did finally break long enough for us to get out and walk the dogbert a bit but that's about all!
The next morning the rain had finally subsided just in time for us to get in the car and head to our next destination.  We had heard of a short but wonderful trail nearby called Hanging Lake that we decided to do before getting too far.  But, this area of CO just didn't work for us as we arrived at the trail head to discover "No Dogs Allowed". Sad, sad day for dogs.  We headed on south in to Carbondale where we found a Ranger station to ask for other nearby hikes.  He pointed us to a couple, most were more than we could handle in a short couple hours.  We did do part of one though.

Pretty Red flower (I always forget the darn flower book!)

Thomas Lake Trail

View looking down on Carbondale, CO

We didn't hike the whole thing as I was anxious to get to our next stop, which involved a lot of driving and no camping reservations, but it was definitely a pretty area.  Maybe next time the weather won't thwart our plans and we'll get in more hiking.