McCullogh Gulch, Near Breckenridge July 2011

This photo pretty much sums it up. Sums what up, you ask? Um... why I LOVELOVELOVE this state and why I LOVELOVELOVE my husband. Sometimes, he has to drag me up these hikes, but 99% of the time, when I'm on the trail, surrounded by all this majestic natural beauty, I thank him for it. And God for creating it and giving me the legs and the ability to hike it... Legs which are starting to fold like a  cheap beach chair under the weight of my growing 2 year old.

Holy.

Heavy.

Toddler.

Batman.

And what's funny is he is still a lightweight according to all the official doctor charts... I can't imagine if he was what he is "supposed" to be. I wouldn't have made it up half this trail!

Thank God then, that he is my tiny little Tea Sam-wich instead of my footlong Meatball Sub Sam-wich, I guess... (Ha, he'll love hearing this when he's 17, huh?) Thank God though that I can still manage to haul his cute little heinie up mountains. Hiney? Heiny? Spell check doesn't like any of them... oh well. Tushie? Nope. Not that either. Oh well!

So here's the trailhead... we took a gamble and drove past almost a mile of parked cars, and SCORED rockstar parking and snagged the second-closest spot to the trailhead, arriving right as someone was leaving. Someone who was out of the house and on the road earlier than us, I should note. We didn't get out of Denver until nearly 9am, and didn't even start the hike until 10:30... I'm guessing the someone who had the spot before us didn't have two kids who slept in, dragged their feet getting dressed, needed a last minute emergency diaper and freaked out over not having their giraffe lovey in the car...

Thank goodness it was a mild, 70 degree, slightly breezy day in the rockies. Even though it was a late start, it was b-e-a-utiful!!

This was pretty much the only time ever that The Hubbs has been behind me on a hike. He had to deal with a Four-Year-Old needing to find a place to potty. (Again, please reference the article "Things Early Hikers Don't Need to Deal With")

This hike is an old mining road, so sure enough, there was an old mining cabin (now converted into a storm shelter) alongside the trail, just a few minutes in.

There's not much that's fun about being a miner I'd bet, but the real estate sorta rocks. Oops, bad pun! :D

At the end of the hike, (well the end of OUR hike, since we were late for lunch in Breckenridge, tired and needed another pitstop) was this beautiful waterfall...

We were told that about another 30 minutes further was a lake, that was "worth it" but that gentleman and his wife lacked two hungry, tired children strapped to their backs, so what do they know.

Maybe next time. As in when the kids are old enough to hike it themselves. Go here to see a photo of it, apparently taken by someone with a really cruddy, like 1.7 megapixel camera.

The Directions: I-70 W to Breckenridge. At the last stoplight at the end of Breck, hit your tripometer thingy or whatever it's called and continue south on 9 for 7.6 miles (past all the cool houses I want to retire in someday) and turn right on Blue Lakes Drive (#850). Go about 100 yards and turn right on McCullogh Gulch Road (#851). Go 2.2 miles to the trailhead. You'll pass the trailhead for Mt. Quandary, one of Colorado's great "fourteeners'. Laugh at the amateurs starting THAT hike at 10am, then realize you haven't done a fourteener in 5 years and shutthehellup.

The Details: Well, a few differing opinions on how long this trail is, depending on what website you query. It's at most, 2.7 miles, so go with that one. It took us about 2 hours, roundtrip and we hung out at the waterfall for a good 10 minutes.

The Dog?: Yup.

Sidenote, be sure to cap off your hike with lunch at Quandary Grill in Breck. Best view in town, nice beers and one helluva burger.

Castlewood Canyon, Lake Gulch Trail

Ben Franklin once said "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Or something like this. You Google it, I'm too busy with important stuff, you know, like making fish sticks and/or wiping something off of some end of someone small.  I promise, if it's both, I wash my hands in between.

Anyway, back to Benny Boy. While I agree with his sentiments if one is say, climbing Everest or even taking two small children to the zoo, (which is arguably harder), sometimes you have to just go with the flow. Sometimes, with small kids, and often with milehighkermunchkins, you can't rely on a plan, planning is pointless and/or not planning is more fun anyway! Wow, lots of and/ors so far today... I am sleep-deprived and/or a little crazy...

*coffee break*  *elevator music*

And now, back to our regularly scheduled show. So...Our Castlewood Canyon Lake Gulch hike last weekend was a perfect example of this not-planning-just-fine-loosey-goosey-way. We checked out the directions and a few details on my cool new other iPhone app, AllHikes, (the first one being iMapMyHike) tossed the kids and the dog in the car and off we went. Really, all we knew was that it was $7 bucks for a day pass, a few friends and family had done it before and said it was fun, and that it was a gorgeous Colorado   day.

Oh hello, Pikes Peak. You look lovely today.

On the no-planning tip, (Tip? Who am I, Run DMC?) we brought our jogging stroller and NOT our hiking backpacks. MilehighkerHubby figured the trail would be flat and wide enough for it... well, except for the first few hundred feet from the parking lot, nope. Upon arrival, the ranger, who took our aforementioned seven bucks, told us the trail has railroad-tie "stairs", big ruts and was single-track in most parts.. oh well. So the kiddies walked and/or we carried them. Oops, guess the coffee didn't help that. I'm just an and/or sorta gal. Whatever the heck that means.

The kids did great! There were a few parts when descending into the canyon that the mama bear in me shrieked and desperately leapt to whisk my precious babies away from the drop-off gently guided my children away from the small, short hill, but other than that, it was a few-feet-wide trail where we could even hold hands and sing a few bars of "The Bear Went Over The Mountain". Note, while the above sentences were a *slight* over-dramatization, there are a few parts of this hike where an unattended child could fall and get hurt, so keep them eyes on them babies if you forget leave your backpacks at home. Even better, we always teach our kids to walk on the inside of a trail, the side far away from the abyss edge. On an unrelated note, I love that movie, and not just for Ed Harris. I'm a sucker for Russian Water Tentacles and purple alien-Manta Rays.

Note, we sorta went off trail a little bit here and crossed the river- not an easy feat when carrying a toddler in your arms, but we did it and if the CPS is reading this, please look at the photo above and note it was a small creek, not a raging rapid scene out of The River Wild (another fabulous movie). While we started on the Lake Gulch Trail, we ended crossing over to the Inner Canyon trail, which ended up at the same Canyon Point parking lot, so no worries.

The Details: 1.98 miles, took us 1:40:05 and elevation gain of 171 feet. Starting elevation was 6618, max elevation was 6621. (it's okay, this confused me at first too, until I looked at the elevation tab on iMapMyHike.com and realized we descended into the canyon first 177 feet, walked along the bottom and then climbed back out to the max elevation of 6621.)

The Directions: Parker road south, past Parker, through Franktown, then follow the signs for Castlewood Canyon and turn right (west) into the park. Follow signs for Lake Gulch trailhead.

The Dawg?: Yup, leashed and since it's a state park, probably a higher chance you'll run into ranger-man, so keep him leashed.

Coyote Song trail, South Park

You know those Where's Waldo books? If it was Where's Milehighkermama?, it would look something like this: a beautiful Colorado *almost* spring day, red sandstone foothills, my MileHighkerHubby and MileHighkerMunchkins all loaded up in the jogger stroller. We skipped the striped shirts and fruity hats, by the way...

We packed it up this morning and headed out the door to South Valley, a Jeffco park lined by towering cliffs, dotted with mars-like sandstone formations and with scrubby (pine?) trees of some sort. Sorry, didn't major in Botany! Bout the only tree I can name on sight is a palm tree and there aren't too many of those around here.

Ha. Anyhoo...

It was a great, hour long loop with rolling hills and nice scenery. Not too shabby for a 20 minute drive! We kept our kids in the double stroller, but we did pass two families with kids the same age that were walking. Note, the trail had deeper ruts than a boring relationship, so if you are going the stroller route, go with the knobby tired variety.

Details: 1 hour, starting elevation of 5802, highest point of elevation 6024, gain of 230 feet, 2.88 miles. (I got me a cool new iPhone app called imapmyhike that shows and records all those nifty stats) nifty_app_link

Directions: C-470 to Wadsworth, south to Deer Creek Canyon Rd, take a right (west) to South Valley trailhead on right.

Dawg: yup, leashed.

Awesome hiking app!

I am a new, and totally i-ddicted iPhone user... My weekly obsession is free apps from the app store. I was so excited to find the Alltrails app- check it out if you have a smartphone and are thinking maybe you should get out and flex something besides your thumb muscles!!!

Birthday Bucket List

For your reading pleasure, a non-hiking post...

So on the eve of the eve of my 33rd birthday, I thought to myself "hmmm, what can I do to mark the occasion? Okay, really I am just procrastinating on rewriting my screenplay, (See bucket list item #7) but I thought, hey if you're going to be procrastinating on writing THAT, why not at least write SOMETHING?

So, here's my bucket list...

I know what you're thinking... why celebrate life with something that sounds so death-y? But really, if you think about the true essence of a bucket list, it's ALL about living. I think the long title is actually a "what-to-do-before-you-kick-the-bucket-list". But that didn't fit on the marquee with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. (Great movie, btw.)

It's not about the end. It's about what you want to do with the in between. And hopefully, there's a lot of in between!

In no particular order... Oh and yes, I know most of these involve travel. I LOVE travel.

1. Walk on the Great Wall of China.
2. Do THIS on the Uyuni Salt Flats. Hot damn, this place is cool. It deserves another photo link. And another. bwahaha these people are funny!
3. See my kids as happy, well adjusted, fair-minded, beautiful adults.
4. Go on a luxury Kenyan Safari with a really good camera.
5. Klimb Kilimanjaro.
6. Read the books of some of my favorite movies: Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, and Legends of the Fall. Note, I did this with my all time favorite movie, Last of the Mohicans and was endlessly disappointed. This leads in to why I want to do #7
7. Write a screenplay and submit it. If there is anything I love like my family and travel, it's MOVIES. I get a thrill when the lights go down, I snuggle into my seat and BOOM. I'm transported. Sometimes the movie can be so well made that it's BETTER than the book. Or in my case, so good you wrote the movie instead of the book, heh heh.
8. Hold a grandbaby. (Duh, mine...)
9. Learn to play guitar. Why is this on so many people's bucket lists by the way? What is it about the frigging guitar that is so enticing? Why isn't it this way with say, the piccolo or accordion?
10. Climb more fourteeners. I used to want to climb all of them in CO... until I realized how technical and dangerous some of them are. I would really like to climb the ones that are hike-able and don't conjure up thoughts of puke-inducing vertigo, heli-rescues or sweaty palms on a fraying climbing rope.
11. See Iguacu Falls
12. oh and Victoria Falls. No, mom, I don't want to do the bungee jump that Victoria Falls offers off the bridge to the left. I did that sort of stupid shit here when I was childless and in college. Please note that skydiving is also not on the list for the same reason. And yes, I would want to strangle my child with the bungee cord too now that I have kids and know how I made you feel when I called you from 6000 miles away telling you what I just did.
12. Kayak amongst calving glaciers and surfacing orcas in Alaska. No grizzlies please. Well maybe from a helicopter, but yeah, I'm not into being shredded. See my camping posts.
13. Sleep here.
14. And here. They have a bar in the lobby too. Now that's the kind of place you do a vodka ice luge. NOT a frat party.
14. See this in real life, of which I made a 1/500th clay model out of my sophomore year of high school, fired and handpainted. I wanted to poke out my own eyes after all that handiwork. Thanks Mr. Dingle for the A+!
15. Keep making fun memories with my wonderful friends.
16. Take my husband and kids to Australia, one of the places that ignited the fire in me to travel. Such a beautiful, diverse, foreign land. And a lot of places I couldn't afford to see then, so pony up, honey.
17. Continue to take photos of charming stray dogs on vacation, give them all witty names and hang 8 x 10's in my house someday of my collection. I already have Pompeii Pooch and Peruvian Pup. Thanks to my mom for her recent submissions of Beijing BowWow and Cairo Canine.
18. Write books about my mom's and dad's family histories. While my days highlights are often something concerning boogers or ballet classes, my parents' backgrounds are pretty fascinating!
19.Wear a bikini again someday. And not wear a ski mask along with it. Scratch that. ROCK a bikini again someday.
20. Walk on the Grand Canyon SkyWalk. I just dig the booties you have to wear. The view sucks.
21. Float here. 
22. See more of the United States... Hey BooBoo, let's start with Jellystone, Uh Yogi, it's Yellowstone.
23. And these guys. And them too. But I'll skip the backside.
24. And more in my homestate. It's embarrassing I live here and haven't been here or here.
25. Kiss my husband on our 50th anniversary. Yes, sweetie, of course I mean you.

So here's to wishing and making those wishes come true... Happy 33rd to me!

Well Bing Crosby didn't like hiking I guess...

Because if he did, he wouldn't have been dreaming up that whole White Christmas thing. What do outdoorsy Denverites do when they have a brown Christmas? Strap on the kiddies and go hiking of course!

(I joked with The Hubbs about this photo by the way, quoting the Princess Bride- "you were supposed to be this colossus!" Sa-Sa walked a lot of the way, but needed a little help and he likes the workout!)

I heard on the radio the other day that Denver only has a white Christmas 35% of the time. Meaning, not only does it not snow ON Christmas Day very often in Denver, but there's not even snow on the ground from recent storms. True, I thought, if I remembered years past... a little sad, but true. The mountains are enjoying a fabulous winter, however, and that's all that really matters. Who wants to drive in snow in the city? (insert chorus of boos and hisses here.)

So while it's a little sad that only one in three of our Christmas mornings are blanketed in winter white loveliness, you're happy if you're a hiker in CO and it's blue skies and 40 degrees the day after Christmas! Then it's WAHOO! Strap them kiddies on, don the knit caps and gloves, spackle them with a little sunscreen and go! Go! GO!

Or stop every thirty seconds to admire a dead, brown weed, cry about your slipping mitten, trip, cry some more, have a sip of water, pick up a rock, throw the rock, ask daddy if coyotes like three year olds... at least that's how hiking goes with OUR family.

In other words, SLOW. The Hubbs carried Samwich, while Sa-Sa and I pulled up the rear and I muttered to myself "it's the journey not the destination, it's the journey, not the destination" and reminded myself over and over that when they're teenagers, they will run screaming from the idea of a hike with their totally lame parents and I need to suck up every wonderful, however frustrating moment of this trail of tears lovely winter hike.

I would have had more photos, usually, but The Hubbs was carrying my new iPhone 4 (yay Christmas!) in his pocket since I was only wearing a light fleece with none. Pockets that is. Anyhoo. Moving on. Slowly. Here's near the top: (the last switchback)

And here's a great shot of the view to the right (south) from this same spot:

And from the top- with Green (Brown) Mountain in the background, looking east... and right into my dog's tush, sorry.

Sa-Sa is really a little too big for backpack carriers now, even though she's built like a lollipop (thin stick of  a body, big round head if you missed it), so we have to keep to the cliff-less trails, hold hands and grit our teeth at our new pace. The Red Rocks Trail/Morrison Slide trail near Red Rocks Amphitheater fit the bill. Took about an hour (maybe 90 mins?) up and back, easy switchbacks, great views from the top and except for the very top where there is one small cliff, not a whole lot to worry about, danger-wise. No coyotes. And we never hike this in the summer when it's rattlesnake city with no shade, so this mild winter day was a nice visit back.

Directions: From Morrison, follow signs for Red Rocks Amphitheater. On the eastern side of the theater is Red Rocks Trail Road. Look for a small parking lot, (About 15 cars would max it out) on the east side of the road. The trail begins on the opposite (west side) and shoots straight up alongside the roadway.)

Details: Kid's pace, 90 mins up to where it levels out and back to the car. You can continue and go through Matthew Winters Park and meet up with Dinosaur Ridge Trail I believe, but we never go that far. Well maintained, switchbacky trail, not steep at all, Oh, often used by mountain bikers, so keep an eye and ear out for them. It seems to be too steep for most of the ones we've seen to go fast at all, so it's never been dangerous to share the trail.

Dog: Yup, and you saw too much of her. Leashes please, especially because of the bikes and horses, but also because we have seen rangers with their trusty ticket-books on this trail before.

Lily Pad Lake/Meadow Creek

I love Colorado in the fall. The aspens turning yellow and orange makes me want to don a dirndl and sing "the hills are ALIIIIIIIIIVE...."

Well, okay, maybe not. I don't even sing in the shower. Samwich even scrunches his nose and hollers "no!" when I try to sing him lullabies.

But I do love me some Colorado fall colors.

So we went a hikin' near Frisco a few weekends back when the colors were in full bloom.

 I was amazed at how tall the aspens were!

 I loved how the leaves were just beginning to fall and carpeted the ground a bit for us. Autumn is definitely here!

This picture really shows the majestic height of those trees! See the little blue dot? That's the Hubbs. 

 The kids of course, got heavy wriggly, so we let them down out of the backpacks. Slower pace, but worth it for my aching spine adorable photos.

 Disclaimer: This isn't Lily Pad Lake. Note the lack of Lily Pads. The real lily pad-filled Lily Pad Lake is another five minute hike up the trail and is really just a beaver pond. I had been there before on another hike, and the kids were hungry, exhausted and wanted to keep throwing rocks into this lake. So we stayed while The Hubbs went to check it out. He came back saying, yup, it's a lake full o' lily pads. :) If you keep going past the Lily Pad Lake, you'll meet up with Salt Lick Trail. As appealing as that sounded, we decided instead to go feed our kids and ourselves lunch down in Frisco. We had committed the egregious error of hiking with hungry hungry hippos toddlers and a meltdown was imminent.

DETAILS: 5 miles out and back if you go down the Salt Lick portion, but we didn't. It was more like 3 miles for us just to the lake and back. It's mostly an easy, rolling trail without a large elevation gain and no super steep sections. The kids hiked most of it themselves easily.

DIRECTIONS: I-70 West to Exit 203. On the traffic circle, take the dirt road that runs along side the highway. Go about 1/2 mile to the trail head and parking lot.

Dawg: Yup. Horses are allowed too, so be sure to keep the dogs leashed.