Chris had a four-day weekend for the fourth of July, so we took advantage of his time off and booked a condo in the mountains to enjoy some time away and cooler mountain air.
Kristen was finishing up a week at FSY (For the Strength of Youth), an inspirational, motivational week similar to what BYU used to offer as EFY (Especially for Youth). She loved it by the way and would love to go back or even sign up to be a counselor once she is 18. She would be awesome as a camp counselor.
We had made plans (and then had to make alternate plans) for her ride to drop her off at Misha's apartment in Denver when the two of them would then drive up to spend Saturday and Sunday night with us.
Chris grabbed some lunch at Arby's and decided to stop and eat it on the side of the road to stay safe in the holiday traffic.
We arrived in Breckenridge around 3 pm and easily found the condo. It was about ten minutes outside of Breckenridge and further away from a lot of tourist traffic.
We dropped off our stuff and then set off on a hike about a ten-minute drive away.
We planned to hike the "easy" Blue Lake Trail below Quandary Peak. Before you get there, watch out for this lovely waterfall. It was just a short walk off the road.
The Blue Lakes Trail followed around the Lower Blue Lake but suddenly wasn't quite so easy when we decide to climb up to the road below the Upper Blue Lake past the waterfall. There was a little bit of scrambling involved. We thought there was a trail but weren't quite so sure once we got going.
We followed the road to the Upper Blue Reservoir and decided to hike a short distance to a water fall on West Ridge. If we had continue on the trail, it would have taken us to the top of Quandary Peak (a Colorado 14-er). The trail wasn't always easy to follow and there were a lot of stretches where we climbed over boulders.
We saw a few marmots along the way.
After we finally made our way back to our car, Chris and I were both glad for a rest.
We stopped for dinner at Myla Rose Saloon and had a great dinner overlooking the mountains.