Road Trip to Colorado

For our vacation this summer we planned a trip to Colorado. Our primary reason for this was to attend a family reunion with Bart's side of the family. After hearing and reading so much about the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, we were pretty excited to be able to see, at least part of, them for ourselves.  After much debating as to whether to fly or drive, the final decision was to drive. I took enough time off work, so we could take our time and really make this vacation an adventure.

The drive from Asheville to Colorado was pretty much an endurance event in itself, and after the second day of driving, we looked at each other and said, ...Well, never mind. We'll skip over that part. 

Our family reunion was at Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort located in Nathrop, Colorado at an elevation of 8,250 feet above sea level. There was no cell phone service or Wi-Fi available in the rooms or cabins, so we were quickly disconnected from the world. After hanging out and catching up with family, we wanted to get outside, explore and figure out what our options were for running. Behind the resort we found a dirt road that was perfect for running and climbed up high enough to take in some beautiful views.

Mount Princeton is the one farthest in the back ground. This is the road we found to go running on. The higher elevation made it somewhat challenging.

Shadow absolutely loved the cooler weather and all the new smells!

Better picture of the soft dirt road. Perfect for running.

A little break to catch our breath and check out the view.

 We also got to see some wildlife.

Not sure what kind of paw print this is, but I think if Shadow was off leash, he would have tracked the beast down. 

The resort has a variety of pools, but for us, the hot springs along Chalk Creek was the most popular. There are 20 hot spring pools located right in the midst of the cool rushing waters of Chalk Creek. Each pool is fed by its own natural geothermal hot spring that bubbles up into the actual creek bed and into circles of stones that create natural pools.

Just don't go too far from the pools or you'll probably be swept away.

In the evenings, we hung out at the Soaking Pool, very relaxing with water temperature of 105 degrees.

After the family reunion, we took a two day stay at the Westin Riverfront Resort located in the heart of Vail Valley. This was a last minute decision for us, and the Westin was the only place that was pet friendly that had a room available. The Westin is a 100% full service resort, so NOT us, but I could get used to living like this in about a nanosecond!

It didn't take long to figure out this area is for outdoor lovers! Other than all the ski slopes that were everywhere, the first thing that struck us was the amount of people cycling on the bike path along the Eagle River, next was the runners, walkers, swimmers, and volley ball players. You name it, people were outside! So awesome!

Finding a place to run was as simple as walking out the back door.

We could run along the Eagle River for miles and miles.

We enjoyed people watching from our deck.

Shadow enjoyed people watching as well.

We had this view from the cafe where we had breakfast. We lovingly named it "monkey face"

Bart posted a picture on Facebook the morning of our second day, and we got a message from two of our good friends that live in Las Vegas saying they were headed right past us traveling on their vacation and wanted to visit with us. We were afraid we missed them, but by the time we returned their call, they were only twenty minutes away. What are the odds of that? All thanks to Facebook! Seeing them was one of the highlights of our whole trip!

Another place we were able to run was at Harry A. Nottingham Park. This was less than a mile from the Westin.

with a great path that went around Nottingham Lake.

and beautiful views no matter which direction you looked!

After daydreaming about learning how to ski and what it would be like to live in such an awesome area, we came across this raised fire hydrant that snapped me back into reality. Colorado gets snow, and lots of it. We didn't even get the flag in the picture that was attached to the back of the fire hydrant. That helps them locate it when it gets buried in snow. And with that, we headed back to the mountains of Western North Carolina. 

Hope you enjoyed some of the many pictures of our trip. We had such a great time and would do it all again, minus the driving :-)

E&B