Colorado, part 3

Thursday was the Epic Hiking Day. We headed up to Maroon Lake which was just a mile or so from where we were camping and explored the wilderness for a bit. We hiked and hiked and ate some lunch and hiked some more. This place was B-E-A-UTFUL. Seriously disgustingly scenic. There are a couple lakes up there that are just punch yourself pretty, and of course, they're filled by waterfalls and streams of crystal clear snow melt coming down from the mountains. Those things are also not bad looking.

This right here. These streams aren't always around, while the snow is all frozen up top and once the snow completely melts they disappear, so I'm guessing hikers/park rangers kind of had to improvise to get across the rather fast moving water. So someone piled a couple of logs together, boom, bridge. Totally unstable and bouncy but very cool and functional if you're careful. We crossed over it the first time without any issue. But coming back, I ate it. Big. At the very end, just before I was about to get to the other side, the log bounced and I lost my cool and slow-mo crashed and burned. I mean like limbs flying around, getting scraped up, me laying on the logs/bank. Huge mess. I didn't fall all the way in, but somehow both my feet ended up in that cold ass water, so I had soggy kicks for a looong while. My left leg took most of the damage, I still have some pretty sweet scratches and bruises.

I think this is may be my first official "fall" while hiking as an adult, so I'll take it. It could have been WAY worse, and it was hilarious. Although it did hurt. A bit. But whatevs, kept on hiking!

That mountain there, Maroon Peak, is the most photographed peak in North America. I'm only telling you this because it's one of those tag lines that is on EVERYTHING and everyone says. Like we stopped in the visitor's center and the lady was all, "Oh, well it's the most photographed mountain in North America!" I mean, for real though. It is beautiful.

BABY GOOSE OMGGGG! So many animals everywhere! Beaver dam!

These streams, man. Raging rapids! After hiking our selves sleepy, we headed back to camp for campfire dinner. And here's our little campsite:

DAWWW, look at that baby tent! That thing has been with us for a while. We've had it for eight years! Since we were wee teenagers! It's a very good tent, the perfect size for us, and definitely from Walmart.

And this ridiculousness was just STEPS FROM OUR CAMPSITE. Like immediately to the right of our tent:

We slept to the sound of rushing water. We also sat and read books by it every afternoon (I read the Divergent and the Help, unimpressed by Divergent but the Help was lovely). It was like those "Nature Sounds" CD's, but real life. If you're in Aspen and you want to camp, Silver Bell campground is where it's at. Also can we talk about how much cheaper camping is than staying in a hotel? We stayed for four days and three nights at our campground for $50, including our car pass. I can't wrap my mind around how much it would have been to stay that long in a hotel in Aspen. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Plus we grilled/picnicked quite a few of our meals! Camping is such a money saver and 100 times more fun than staying in a hotel. Get ye a tent! More on hotels, and the nightmares they present, in the next post.

The rest of the trip here!

Flower crowns and four legged friends

After getting back from the White Sands, we headed back to the campsite to chill out. As soon as we pulled up to our tent, it started raining! It was perfect timing because the windows of tent were definitely open. So we jumped out of the car and snuggled up in the tent while a terrific thunderstorm raged outside. Brendon read a book (we're on that Game of Thrones nonsense) and I eventually zonked out and had a little nap. I woke up about an hour later to bright warm sunshine that turned our tent into a little oven. A nap in the mountains during a thunderstorm? Up there on my list of awesome life moments.

After stumbling out of the tent and waking up a bit, I got down on making a flower crown. As soon as I saw all those flowers in our meadow, I knew I had to get my crown on. It was actually really easy and fun! I used nothing but flowers and leaves to hold it all together and it worked out pretty dang well, except for that bug that ended up in my hair.

It looks better on him. I used the white flowers as my base, used long blades of grass to tie them together into a circle, and then just kind of threaded in the other flowers. Not too shabby if I may say so! It held up for the rest of our time there and we left it at our campsite, so hopefully another camper found it and made use of it!

After my flower making escapade, we did a little hiking through the mountains around our campsite. I cannot express enough how much I loved it here, it was so beautiful. Although it was beyond pretty and green, this forest is still recovering from a terrible forest fire from June of last year. So many charred, fallen down trees. It was heartbreaking, but thanks to all the rain, much of the forest is recovering! Nature always finds a way.

Lookie there! A little friend! She just stared at us and then went on munching on her grass while we took selfies.

While camping we ate all of our dinners by campfire. We brought lots of veggies to grill and made a pit stop for some hotdogs (GASP, meat!) and of course we roasted marshmallows. Cooking on a campfire is my new favorite. We had some roasted corn that was to die for. Also, check out our dinner guests!

There was a herd of deer just hanging out in the meadow with us while we cooked and ate dinner. They came down the mountain side, one by one. There ended up being like ten of them and three were little babies! The grass was so high you could barely see them. Best dinner entertainment ever.

You know there's more to come! This is going to be like a week of New Mexico, y'all. Sorry boutcha eye balls.
The rest of the trip here.

New Mexico numero uno

This was our view heading up into the mountains to Ruidoso. We have this luck where whenever we go out of town, it likes to rain on us. It rained on us in Arkansas, it rained on us in Fredericksburg, and it rained on us in Ruidoso. But only a little this time, and truly it was great timing all around. New Mexico has been in the midst of a terrible drought. But thankfully, starting a week or so ago they've been having crazy rain which has been a blessing (because dry mountains = forest fires), and we came in the middle of it. We drove into this storm and it was pretty epic. Storms in the mountains are full of thunder and lightning and big fat showers of rain, but they don't last long. The storm we drove into disappeared just in time for us to set up camp. Or find our camp I should say.

We had no plans whatsoever for this trip. I knew Ruidoso was surrounded by Lincoln National forest so there would be ample campgrounds, and I knew we'd probably stay at least one night in a hotel, but that was it. We got into Ruidoso after a rather loooong drive from Texas around three, had a late lunch, and then went on a mission to find a place to stay. At first we were a little defeated by the rain and looked for hotels, but we machoed up and remembered that we camped for days in the rain last year, so we could do this.

After lots of searching and lots of driving, we found our little slice of heaven nestled in the mountains. We were the only campers at the entire site for the first two days (aside from the camp host of course, who was so nice), and on the third we were joined by just a few families. This place was perfect. If you ever go to Ruidoso and want to camp, the Oak Grove campground is where it's at. Actually, go to Ruidoso and camp just for this campground. We had our own private meadow just steps from our tent. A green meadow full of flowers, surrounded by mountains. The recent rains had turned this place into a green wonderland. We overheard some locals saying they can't remember the last time Ruidoso was this green. My words will not nearly do this place justice and neither will these pictures, but we'll try.

I mean, this place was something out of a dream. And down that hill in the forest? A little mountain stream.

Perfection, y'all. Our first night camping there was a full moon! It was so bright, it lit up the whole mountain side. Inside our tent it looked like everything outside was glowing. And the next day, after a rainy and muggy afternoon, we woke up to this loveliness:

The road our campsite was off of was called Ski Run Road. It's the road you take to get to Ski Apache, the local ski area. It's a twelve mile twisty-turny (understatement) road up into the mountains, with a spectacular view. (If you are a hardcore runner, I'd like to see you attempt the Ski Run Road Challenge. Not only is it 12 miles of insane hills, but you're running at crazy altitudes!) Our campsite was five miles up, but we drove the rest of the way up our first morning there. The views were phenomenal.

 

Channeling my inner Weasley clearly, what's up with that hair? I think someone needs a trim. Badly. Look at that mess. Oh and did I mention the temperature? While the highs were hanging around 100 degrees in Texas, the high in Rudioso was like 75. Amazing.

A big shout out to Bruce Wayne, our sweet still fairly new car, who got more than broken in on this trip. She was SO dirty, exterior and interior, by the end of it all and we put an obscene amount of miles onto that odometer. She was a champ though and climbed up and down those mountains beautifully. She even did a little offroading!

Enough mountain photos for you? No? Good, there's a ton more. Just wait.

The rest of the trip here.