We had a busy weekend. Some of it just spontaneous, some with Chris' planning.
On Friday evening, we went out for dinner. Chris has been craving Thai food and there is a new restaurant in Monument. The restaurant was a couple doors down from our favorite Chinese massage place. We decided on a whim to see if they had any openings at 7 pm.
Unfortunately, they were already booked, but at 6:20 we decided to book a 40-minute side by side session and then go for dinner at 7 pm.
The one thing I didn't enjoy is that they seem to have a set routine and if you choose a 40-minute session, they tried to speed up their one hour routine into those 40 minutes. Still it was spontaneity and a massage.
Elephant Thai, the new restaurant, was pretty good. We would definitely try them again.
We planned to hike in the morning, so once we arrived home, we got all of our food ready for the morning. We wanted to be out of the house by 8 am.
We ended the evening with a hot tub soak.
We still had some scrambling to do in the morning to get ready, but having the food ready to go made a big difference.
It took us an hour and 20 minutes to get to the trailhead at Newlin Creek. The last mile in was on a bumpy rutted road. Chris drove about 20 miles per hour to keep the Pilot safe.
Fortunately, the hike was mostly in the shade. We hiked 3 miles into the old Herrick Sawmill. Nathaniel Herrick had dreams of harvesting lumber in the area and selling to to local coal and silver camps. Herrick began by creating a road into the area and then hauling a huge steam boiler and flywheel to the site.
The boiler and flywheel remain today.
We saw a few glimpses of fall along the trail.
Later in the afternoon as we returned to Colorado Springs, we stopped at a few homes on the Parade of Homes circuit. It is always fun to get more decorating ideas.
Instead of going home, Chris had booked us tickets at Comedy Club. We made a quick stop at Costco for some cheese, grabbed dinner at Chick-fil-A and drove across town to Looney's.
We got home around 9 pm after a very full day.