Colorado

Last month we got nice little break from the heat and humidity of Texas as we spent a few days up in the mountains of Colorado vacationing with Geoff's family.  Geoff, Olivia and I hoped on a plane to Durango and from Durango we drove another 3-4 hours to a small town in southern Colorado called Lake City.  As expected, it was beautiful there.

Braving the cold water on her toes

The primary reason for trip, other than to spend time with family, was for the adults (minus Mama Glory who watched the girls) to climb Umcompaghre Peak, elevation 14,309 ft, the 6th highest peak in Colorado.  All of the others were seasoned climbers of "14ers", but this was my first one to climb.  It was quite the experience!  It total, up the mountain and back down, we hiked 11.75 miles in seven hours and covered 8,000 feet in total elevation change.  The weather was beautiful and perfect for climbing, although we did encounter a brief little hail storm on our descent.  Hail beats rain though because you don't really get wet...just pelted in the ear.

At the trailhead when everyone looks fresh and ready to go!

Geoff with our destination in the background.  This was around 12,000 ft where the tree line ended.

This picture below shows probably the steepest part of the climb where you had to use your hands to steady yourself as you went up the area on the right.  

Views from the summit were amazing everywhere you looked.  We took a nice break up there and enjoyed our lunches before heading back down.

The Streit family of three...with baby #2 at 14 weeks.  Much more on that to come in a future post.

I think the hike down might have been worse than the climb up because tired legs and sore feet were setting in. Our car was definitely a welcome sight to see.

The cousins had much fun playing together.  They LOVED playing Ring-Around-a-Roise.  They would do it over and over and over and over again.  We hit up a little park in Lake City a couple times to help them burn off some energy.  As the oldest, Avalon was definitely the leader of the group and it was fun to watch the little girls try to keep up with her and do what she was doing.

Since the girls all have birthdays all within about two weeks of each other in late August-early September, we went out for ice cream to celebrate.  Olivia does not get ice cream, or sweets in general, very often so she was thrilled.

Avalon thoroughly enjoying her ice cream! Olivia keep pointing at Avalon and then pointing at her own face, a little confused by Avalon's Hitler style ice cream mustache.

We got to see plenty of wildlife while we were there.  We saw numerous deer, including around 6 bucks with huge antlers right in the front yard.  We also saw four black bears.  One little cub was just chillin' in a tree in town and then the morning we left, we saw a mama bear and her two cubs in the front yard of the cabin.

Lastly, our trip back to Durango to catch our flight back to Houston was not without some excitement.  First off, we left Lake City a little later than we had planned, but Geoff wasn't worried because he doesn't have a problem driving fast when necessary.  Plus, he had found a small short cut that would save us a little time.  Well, the first problem we had was when the road we were taking as a short cut was temporarily closed due to a hot air balloon festival.  It was cool to see the balloons, but required us to backtrack and we lost time.

Then Olivia started making spitting noises and next thing I know, she's throwing up all over herself and her car seat.  We pulled over and got her cleaned up using dirty clothes from our suitcases (it's not like we were prepared with towels for such occasion) and got her changed.  We got back on the road and 30-45 minutes later, she again throws up whenever else is left in her stomach.  She didn't act too upset about it, other than being covered in puke, and didn't seem to be in any pain so we think she probably got a little carsick going over the mountain passes with all their turns while looking at her books.  We finally arrived at the airport check-in counter for our 12:00 flight at 11:25.  Fortunately for us, Durango is a small enough airport that you have up until 30 minutes before your flight to check in, so we just barely made it.  The rest of the trip home was uneventful (Thank you, Lord!) and Olivia did great on the plane.