Our 14th Wedding Anniversary

Most of our friends and family predicted our marriage will never last. A few times, I'll admit, I was not so sure, either. But, here we are, 14! year later. Amazing.

To celebrate, Chris booked a trip for us in Estes Park at the Deercrest Resort where he stayed in July on his trip with his Dad, brother and nephew. I really had no idea what to expect, but I was excited to get away together for our now annual anniversary trip.

We took the kids to school on Friday morning, August 23, and set off on the 9-10 hour trip to Estes Park. The drive is one of the longest drives. Nebraska is so boring to drive through. But, Chris and I were able to talk, uninterrupted, which may not happen again until our next anniversary. :)

We arrived to Estes Park around 4. The resort sits right on the Fall River and our room was right by the waterfall. It was beautiful. The room was older, I will say that, but we did not care. The scenery was fabulous, the resort is adult only and non smoking. Perfect. :) The air smelled so fresh. It was cooler there, too. It was not cold, just cooler, in the 70s.

Friday night we walked around Estes park and did a little shopping before stopping at Poppy's Pizza for dinner. Believe it or not, we did not order pizza. I had a very good raspberry salad and Chris had a Chicken sandwich. It was good and fun to eat local. We chilled the rest of the night and prepared for our hike the next day.

Saturday morning started very early, too early for me. :) We were awake at 5:15 to slam down some Greek Yogurt before hitting the trails. We set out to the Rocky Mountain National Park Entrance and then to the Bear Lake Trail head. Chris had been there the month prior, but we set out to see even more, hiking a total of 10 some odd miles in all. It was beautiful, but it was effort. We did a little climbing up and a little climbing down to see pretty lakes and waterfalls. It was gorgeous.

After our hiking, we got in the car and drove Trail Ridge Road up to the Alpine Visitors Center and hiked up the many stairs to the top for an amazing view. I am not a fan of driving on roads that have cliff drops on either side. Chris sure had fun making fun of me and trying to scare me more than I already was. Anyway, after a day of hiking, we were exhausted. Time for some pizza! We stopped at Picnic in the Park for some wood fired pizza. I was AMAZING! We ate the entire thing. Mind you, we only had trail mix, apples and cereal all day through our hiking. It was a fun day.

Longs Peak Trail

Sunday was our last day there. We slept in and walked to Big Horn Restaurant for some home cooked breakfast. This was Chris' favorite. Our walk to and from the restaurant helped relieve our achy bodies from our hiking. We thought we were in shape, too! We jumped into the car and set out to the Longs Peak Trail head. Chris has it in his mind that he wants to summit Longs Peak. We will see about that. The place was really crowded as we got there mid morning not anticipating hiking much after our big day on Saturday. We got there and decided to hike the trail a bit (good thing we came prepared with our packs!). The trail was STRAIGHT UP over boulders. It was crazy! It was not busy on the trail like it was the previous days as you have to be in amazing shape to set up on this trail. We hiked up about 3 miles and then we could see Longs Peak. The view was beautiful as well as the view of the Rocky Mountain National Park. We were above the treeline at almost 11000 feet. We could have set up farther, but we were not equipped to summit (which is 6 hours up and 6 hours back I believe). So, we set back down. At least it gave Chris an idea of the terrain if he ever does return. This hike was beautiful, too. But, the trail did us in.

We relaxed at the resort until it was time to leave the next morning.

We had a wonderful anniversary trip. The kids had a blast with my parents, too, going to Shelby Fun Days, eating out two times and playing with their dog Kota. So, we all had a little vacation!

Until next year...