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.