Colorado Trip

Well, I think most of the socks are washed and folded (rolled, actually) and are in baskets for each child to put away... guess I can post some more pictures!

At least untill naptime is over...

We had a wonderful time in White Pine!

The cabin sits at right about 10,000 feet elevation so it's right on up there... Elijah and Melanie (my sister & her husband) and Stephen (my brother) came with us.

The first night we were there, I woke up at 2 am hearing something on the deck rummaging thru the (empty) icechests. Luke and I got up and peeked out the window to see a BEAR, right up on the deck making himself at home! It was about the height of me and we had to bang on the windows and door to get it to move on. I tried to get it's picture but he wasn't really into that, so instead we have a picture of the damage he caused to the icechest...

We also happened to see 4 moose, 2 mountain goats, lots of deer, a few marmots, and oodles of chipmunks (Stephen even {accidently} ran over one).

We had 2 days of riding that turned out very eventful... One day included 2 flat tires, getting quite lost and 1 four wheeler running out of gas... thankfully near the top of the pass so we could coast down the last few miles into Pitkin to get gas.

The other eventful day we had decided to find a pass that Luke (or none of the rest of us) had ever been to... we got caught in a major downpour that included hail! We ended up taking shelter under some trees as the trail turned into a small stream. As soon as there was a small break in the storm we all jumped back on our four wheelers and went down the mountain as fast as we could. By the time we made it back down to Tin Cup there was no shelter to find and we were still a good 2 hours from the cabin. We did manage to find a small tent BBQ vendor who was happy to BBQ up some lunch for us while we sat in her tent. It was delicious food and we all stuffed ourselves with smoked pork, ribs, beef brisket and brats... and her signature baked beans! An hour or so later we made our escape into the sunshine... ahhh. By the time we made it back, we were mostly dry, most of the kiddos had slept the ride home and we were ready to eat again!

We did some fishing (Riley and Phoenix each caught 2) and hanging out by the creek, exploring old mines, cabins and various other points of interest. Luke, Stephen and Elijah took off a few times for more advanced trails and even hiked way up into old mining grounds and found all kinds of fun stuff... fools gold, a o-l-d fork and some oyster cans!

By the end of the week we had put almost 450 miles on our fourwheelers!!!

We are home and recovering well and doing loads and loads of laundry...!