The girls were certainly excited when he walked in the door. Some of their first comments were, "I thought you weren't coming home until Saturday." Hurray for us that he got a couple of extra days at home. Now his schedule was opened up until Wednesday afternoon with little to no meetings. And to make things even better, Tuesday was Chris' Service Day. On the anniversary of his hire date with CA, he is now given the day off. Because he had originally planned to be working in Phoenix, he didn't think he would actually get to benefit from the "Service" Day. It was a happy set of events that led to Tuesday.
We spent the day just him and me leisurely driving through the mountains looking at the beautiful yellow-leaved Aspens. It was an unusual day for us. The girls were in school, so we just took off and had a wonderful time together.
We stopped first at Boulder Falls.
Our drive led us up through Nederland where we turned off the round-about toward Estes Park. As we drove along, the leaves became more and more yellow, like big splotches of butter dropped in the forest. We slowed in one spot where cars lined both sides of the road, people snapping away with their cameras. We thought maybe there were some elk or a moose, but no, it was this field of vivid yellow.
We drove a little further along to a bend in the road.
Chris directed me to this view. It would have been lovely to be in the middle of this stand of trees looking up.
We continued on past Allentown and on to Estes Park where we stopped for lunch at Casa Grande Mexican Restaurant. We sat on the patio enjoying the sunshine, the company, this view, and an unexpectedly pleasure-filled day.
