Baseball and Backpacking

Another awesome weekend in Colorado- complete with both city and mountain experiences! On Friday night we took a group of people to the Rockies game (yay free tickets through work!) It was a great way to bring a lot of people together- including a classmate from high school who I hadn't seen since graduating. The Rockies won (woohoo) and the sunset was absolutely amazing!












(see that absolutely adorable white wrap I am wearing in these pictures? I knitted it!)


On Sunday morning we headed out with two friends, Matt and Dan, to the James Peak wilderness. We started at the East Portal Trailhead, the same trailhead Sean and I took for our first wintercamping trip in February. We were excited to see that the snow had melted and the flowers were out!












We had expected the sunshine to last, but at about 10,000 feet encountered quite a bit of snow. We hiked up to Roger's Pass Lake, around 11,200 feet, and found an awesome camp site big enough for two tents. We made it just in time because as soon as we finished setting up the tents a storm rolled in that didn't leave until the middle of the night. The ominous clouds hanging out on the ridge we planned to hike across forced us to head back down early Sunday morning.

Sunday

On Sunday morning we went to Castlewood Canyon with Chad, Kevin and Elizabeth. We arrived around 9am and hiked around for about 4 hours. We started on the Rim Trail, sidetracked ourselves with some bouldering and ended up hiking down into the canyon. It was really hot so finding a waterfall to cool us down was perfect. Castlewood Canyon is a small state park and we were smart getting there early, it was super crowded as we were leaving. We had the entire afternoon left and decided to have a picnic back in Denver. Surprise, Surprise a thunderstorm came rolling in and pushed our picnic back inside. The pictures at the bottom show the Denver sky- during a tornado warning and then a half an hour later.

BUSY SPRING

Spring is here- and apparently in Colorado, that means thunderstorms! You probably already know that I LOVE thunderstorms- and watching them through our big windows is a lot of fun...but even I am almost sick of these things by now. We have had seven straight days of intense afternoon showers- and many more during the month of May. I can't wait for some sunshine! Still, it's given Sean some good photogpraphy practice





We ran into lightning (of course) during our second summit attempt of Mt. Harvard. We spent the entire winter getting used to snow shoes and snow climbs so that we could battle Mt. Harvard and win. Of course we showed up and found almost no snow (and this is a week ealrier than we tried to climb last year...crazy) but we did find a lot of rain and a viscious thunderstorm. Still a pretty weekend!







We finally decided after 9 months of living 3 blocks from the capitol that it might be time to take a walk around...





AND! We had a party! There were a whole bunch of June birthdays with friends of ours, and my dear friend Lydia was in town on my birthday, which happens to be just a few days before hers. To celebrate we had a pool party/ bbq- and it was a total blast! It was great for me because it fell on my actual birthday- definitely the most fun celebration I have had in a long time. Lydia and I went to Red Rocks for a concert the day before- the first concert for both of us at that venue.






FINALLY-we've just been learning how to make delicious and inexpensive trail food. We made our first batch of fruit leathers this week - and they were scrumptious!




And our spring kickball league finished, but the summer one has just started. We play in the Sunken Gardens- and our team is undefeated! Even if there's only been one game...



So that's the last few weeks...can't wait until Summer gets here!