Weekend Explorers

 Is it weird that I still feel really pumped from our weekend?  Blame it on the mountain air, or some good exercise with friends, but either way, I'll take it!  

After spending a spontaneous Friday night at happy hour, enjoying great conversation with my bestie, we decided to get up Saturday morning and do a fun, new hike.  After some online research, we decided on the Beaver Brook trail in Genesee Park.  It took us about 20-25 minutes to get to, but it literally felt like we were in the middle of nowhere!  Miles from home.  It offered some beautiful scenery on our descent into the valley, and a serious (for me!) workout on the return uphill.  


On our water break, we decided to do a little impromptu family photo sesh.  Don't mind us, we just needed to make sure we got every combination of our group as we could.  And no, we weren't delirious, this was before the climb back up.







This photo gives just a little taste of the uphill trail on our return.  It also gives me away, that I was in the back the whole time! Ha! 


Don't let the beauty of the scenery fool you -- it was COLD and WINDY!  Luckily, we were moving, so we stayed pretty warm... especially on the uphill return!

After our morning hike, we found a cute little organic, family-owned cafe and bakery tucked away in a cute mountain town.  We were very pleasantly surprised at the quality of both the food and the service, and will most definitely be returning with out-of-town visitors in tow.

We then went our separate ways with our friends, and, being spontaneous, Chris and I continued our drive through the cute little mountain towns.  As we came down out of the mountains, we decided to go to the super cheap movie theater in Littleton (we weren't far away at that point!) to watch the movie Prisoners.  It was our first time at the theater, and we were very excited to find that the tickets were only $2.50!  And for a fairly new movie as well!  And even better, we have one of these theaters just down the road from our house. Score!

After the movie, we made it home and had a much-needed relaxing evening indoors.

But we didn't relax for long...  Sunday morning, we decided to set off East to explore the plains a bit.  We always seem to head to the mountains (understandably so!), but were curious what the flatter part of our new state had to offer. Turns out?  Not much!  Just lots and lots of tumbleweeds (I felt right at home!).  Don't believe me?  See for yourself!




{ pit stop. }

We finished off our Sunday with a brisk walk around the lake at dusk.  All in all?  A really great weekend with the hubs and friends!

Now we are looking forward to two long weekends in a row!  Bring on the adventures!