Colorado Springs

After Austin, we spent a month in Colorado Springs, CO. We had gone a bit crazy with our spending in Austin, eating out with friends and exploring all the food and drink options the city had to offer (there were quite a few). We reeled ourselves back in once in Colorado and made an agreement to eat out as little as possible. This was actually fairly easy because we spent most of our time in Colorado hiking, camping, and exploring the Rocky Mountains. We got creative in our camping and trail meals.

We rented the basement apartment of a house with an absolutely amazing view of the rocky mountains surrounding Colorado Springs. The apartment itself wasn't much to write home about, but it had everything we needed. The kitchen didn't have an oven or a dish washer, but it had two toaster ovens and a smokeless grill. We didn't really care that it wasn't fancy because we spent 90% of our time on the outside patio. 

Patio Home

We were there in the middle of the summer, so the days were warm, but not hot. We also got a nice mountain breeze most days. We would sit at the patio table and do our work, take our calls, and soak in the views. Bailey loved this because his ideal situation is to be outside with both Mom and Dad at all times.

We got rain shower right before sunset most nights which lead to amazing sunset views. We would walk around the neighborhood or go down to Ute park just down the street and soak in the twilight.

Most deer in Colorado are mule deer, and they are huge! They don't run away from people or from dogs like the deer in Virginia do. There was a mama deer with two babies who would sleep under the neighbors' porch. One morning Bailey was outside when the mama deer jumped over our fence and chased bailey around the yard! Bailey has chased many a deer in Virginia, so he probably had this coming. It put a good sense of fear in Bailey and he hasn't tried to mess with any deer since!

Ute Park

Ute Park was the coolest neighborhood park I have ever explored. The park had an extensive, diverse trail system; There were rock scrambles, dense forest portions, meadows and creeks, and beautiful views. It was really spectacular, like a mini Rocky Mountain national park.

Missing Keys

In addition to Ute Park there was a whole trail system behind the neighborhood that we explored as well. We went on a long evening hike after work one weekday and somewhere along the way I dropped our set of keys, including the only key to our apartment and one of our car keys. We got back home and realized the keys were not attached to my keychain. We retraced some of our steps and called our landlord who was going to meet us at the unit if we didn't find the dropped keys. We had also made friends with the woman who lived in the main unit of the house, she was a gem and found a set of keys in the garage of the house that luckily included a key to our unit.

The next day we retraced our entire hike but never found the set of keys! Bailey loved that we got to do the whole hike over again though.

Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods was only 10 minutes from our house. I was in awe of this park! I love the large red rock formations, I think they are so unique and grand. I had been to Red Rocks in Denver before, but the large jagged formations in Garden of the Gods were new to me. The three of us went to Red Rocks together the first time and explored the main portion of the park together. Tyler had to leave for a few days for a work trip and Bailey and I went back on our own and explored the trail system around the formations. These trails offered some amazing views of the formations.

Chatfield State Park:

Tyler flew in and out of Denver for his work trip. I went to pick him up from the airport and we planned to do some exploring between Denver and Colorado Springs on our way back. We were hoping to go to to Roxborough State park, but when we arrived we realized the park did not allow dogs. We had Bailey with us, so we had to change our plan for the day. We ended up going to Chatfield State Park instead. This park was just down the road and contained a beautiful lake. We hung a hammock next to the water and had a wonderful afternoon swimming and catching up on the few days we had been apart.

We did get the faithful afternoon rain storm and took shelter under a pile of giant sticks and brush that someone had made.

We got to do so many amazing things in Colorado like camping in Rocky Mountain National Park, sand surfing in Great Sand Dunes National Park, and hiking into an excluded camp site at Eleven Mile State Park. Each of these adventures deserves its own blog post though, so more to come!