Colorado Part 3: Climbing Mountains

I have been climbing a lot of mountains lately it seems like. The mountain of laundry is finally contained, the mountain of tiredness is slowly fading, one nap at a time, and the mountain of mess our home was in when we got home is finally gone.

All of that out of routine business was absolutely worth it to get to climb some real mountains. Some by car and others by foot. Today is the one we climbed by car, tomorrow is the one we climbed by foot :) I saved the best for last.

I dont know if we really "planned" on driving over this mountain the day we set out, but they are addicting. You start seeing things you have never before seen in your life and probably will never see again and you just want to keep climbing, you just want to see what is at the top and the other side.

This by far was the biggest highlight of the climb.

A momma Elk

I spotted her and jumped out of the car and went running like a crazy pregnant lady (should not do) to snap her picture. She was up very high and it was the neatest thing I have ever seen.

And then out of the car came cute husband (to see what on earth I was doing) who said "oooo take my picture in front of her"

It reminded me of my grandpa Bob and I thought it was cute!

We climbed....

11,019 ft elevation

and climbed...

12,028 ft

and we reached some snow

This road has not been open long. They have to plow it and there are parts where the snow is taller than you.

See, all white around husband is snow....it was crazy!

12,134 ft

This was at the top. It got pretty nasty and sputtered snow. AND when we went back to the park the next day, this road was closed because a few FEET of snow had been dumped on it the night before

I bet some of you are wondering where Weston was? He was there, just along for the ride :)

Slept pretty much the whole time

Once we got over the mountain we stopped and had lunch. AND FROZE OUR BUTTS OFF. No time for pictures of that we were busy munching and gettting back in the car for some heat. A really sweet family joined us and they were celebrating someone in their families birthday and gave us some cake.

We met  A LOT of nice people on the trip. A LOT.

Everywhere we went we chatted with people from, Kansas, Tennessee, Ohio, people from all over.

Anyway...while trying to find me a cup of coffee we ran into these guys...

:)

And we decided to take a walk down this trail that was stroller capable.

The views were beautiful and we saw more elk from afar.

But the highlight of that walk was on the way back to the truck. Weston found mud puddles.

He had to stomp in

Every

Single

One

of

Them

:)

He was one happy boy and it was very easy to take his picture (for a change)

We headed back over the mountain and were very excited that Weston was awake so we could take his picture in front of the snow bank...

Which he clearly did not understand our logic

We made it back down to the bottom where things were living again and blooming.

We headed back to our cabin and prepared for our next round of adventures that ended up being our favorite and I cant wait to share it with you!