Mount Evans

Chris has wanted to drive to Mt. Evans since we moved to Colorado. It was closed to the public last summer, we were excited to finally get a reservation for this year. 

Mt. Evans claim to fame is that it is the highest paved road in North America. Just be mindful that this road has no guard rails. I didn't feel as though we were in danger at all or that the road was scary. You just had to watch out for the cyclists biking their way to the top. Those riders are crazy!

Mount Evans is the 14th tallest 14-er in Colorado.

The drive is 15-miles from the entrance (you will need a reservation), and passes by Mount Goliath Nature Center and Summit Lake Park. 

Before entering the park, Chris and I stopped at Echo Lake Park along the Mount Evans Scenic Byway. Lots of people were fishing in the early morning sunshine. We planned to return later in the day to hike from Echo Lake to Chicago Lake.

Chris and I stopped at Mount Goliath Nature Center before continuing on to Mount Evans.

As we climbed above tree line, the landscape changed but was still pretty green for this time of the year. The parking lot at Mount Evans was busy but we were able to find one of the remaining spots.

From the parking lot you can continue hiking 0.6 miles on the summit trail to the tip top of Mount Evans. That was hard. The air was thin above 14,000 feet and my chest hurt as I climbed. But, we made it. Fortunately it wasn't too far.

Someone had left this sign at the top for people to pose with.

We saw lots of mountain goats in the area. Some brown ones that blended into the scenery, and some that were a scraggly white. I think that is our first mountain goat sighting in our 20 years in Colorado.

There used to be a restaurant at Mount Evans, but it burned in the 70s and was never rebuilt.

An Escape Room Birthday

For Misha's birthday, we drove to Westminster to try an escape room.

We were not great at escaping, however, the clues were NOT intuitive at all. For instance, one of the clues was to knock seven times slowly on a door to make it open. We were supposed to get that from 7 Knockington Way as a location on a letter.

We had to ask for help a few times, and finally escaped a few minutes after our time was up. 

We have participated in escape rooms before that were easier for us to figure out the clues, so not sure that we would do this one again.

Misha's Birthday

So amazing that 20 years has flown by with this girl. Misha has been such a blessing to our family and has always had such a unique personality. Ohhh, the pictures I have...

Love my Misha Kline!

Kristen's First Job Interview

Kristen has been applying for jobs for the summer. Of all of the jobs she applied for, Marshall's was the first to call and ask for an interview.

Kristen had to call back to schedule an interview. She picked 10 am on Thursday. And that happened to be the only time on Thursday and Friday that I was unavailable. 

Her text to me as she wanted to verify my schedule: please say it works i had to call on the phone for that

Making phone calls is not anywhere on her list of things she likes to do!

Misha was kind enough to drive Kristen into Longmont for the interview.

And, Kristen said the interview went well. Here's hoping she will get the job!

Vail Getaway - Day 3

This was a slower morning for me. 

Chris brought his mountain bike and set off on a trail right behind the hotel where we were staying. He had thought initially to go over to Vail to bike, but it would cost $65 to use the lifts. He opted for the free trail.

We had to check out of the hotel at 1 pm and Chris texted from the parking lot at 1 pm that he had arrived and was putting his bike on the Pilot.

I left Chris' suitcase in the room so that he could change his clothes and brought the rest of our luggage and stuff down to the car.

We wanted to explore downtown Vail a little before driving home. It was so European looking and feeling. If Vail wasn't so darn expensive, it would be a lovely place to live...in the summer.

Chris grabbed some lunch and then we walked over to the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens.

We started for home around 3 pm and, with great traffic all of the way, made it home in two hours.

Vail Getaway - Day 2

One of the iconic hikes in Colorado is the Hanging Lake Hike outside of Glenwood Springs. Since seeing some amazing pictures of the lake and waterfall, I have always wanted to visit. In fact, we have tried to visit the area two other times when we were turned away because there was no parking in the lot. 

It is a popular hike.

Chris lucked out with the last two tickets for the hike today at 9:30. Maybe a little later in the day than we wanted since the weather was hot, but we jumped on the opportunity to try the hike.

Let me just say that if the hike at Beaver Creek that Chris and I did on Monday was up the side of the mountain, the Beaver Creek hike was a much more gentle straight up the side of the mountain kind of hike.

The hike to Hanging Lake was climbing steps and boulders up up and up. There were only a few level parts along the way—and seven or eight bridges that we crossed.

Once we got close to the lake, a railing had been installed to help hikers up the last bit of the trail. And you needed it. After hiking 1.25 miles in less than an hour, we were ready for a rest.

Actually we hiked first to the source of the lake, Sprouting Rock Falls. As you can imagine from the name, the waterfall springs right out of the side of the mountain. You can walk behind the falls and explore the area.

After taking some pictures, we climbed a short way back down to Hanging Lake which is skirted by Bridal Veil Falls. The water was a stunningly clear blue with little fish swimming around.

If you take a moment to divert your eyes from the falls back toward Glenwood Canyon where you are met with amazing views there as well.

The sad thing is that the canyon burned last summer and the destruction was all around. The firefighters must have gone to great lengths to save the Hanging Lake area.

If you choose to hike to Hanging Lake, be prepared with good shoes. Chris and I saw people hiking in flip flops! Bring lots of water.

There is a restroom at the parking area and another one at the trailhead. There are no facilities anywhere else on the trail.

Reservations are required to hike to Hanging Lake. Reservations are $12 per person. In fact, your reservation will be checked at the entrance gate as well as at the trailhead.

The hike down was definitely challenging as well with all of the steps down and then trying to keep from slipping on any of the rocks.

We were pretty spent once we reached our car. That hike was no joke!

For the rest of the day, we decided to drive an hour and a half further to Grand Junction. 

Since a new temple was announced, we had thought that Grand Junction could perhaps be a “next” landing place for us once we are empty nesters.

It’s not. It was so much dryer and so not green than we had remembered. So, we will keep looking. Maybe we are just meant to stay where we are.

For dinner, we ended up in Edwards at a unique place called the Drunken Goat. It was all about cheese and small appetizer type dishes. 

Vail Getaway - Day 1

Chris planned a quick getaway to Vail. The two older girls had to work and Kristen really didn’t want to come, so we set off for a few days together.

Chris’ work has a summer shut down around July 4th. Since the 4th was on a Sunday this year, he got the 5th-7th as vacation days. Perfect.

Even more perfect since he gets back to work on Thursday and Friday is his last day! Yep, he is switching to a new job at a company called Logic Monitor. He begins that position on July 19th. So he has an additional week off in between the switch.

I imagine we will just do some day trips and hikes a little closer to home.

We left Monday around 11 am after finishing some laundry and mowing the lawn.

Vail is a new destination for us. 

Chris and I stopped at Frisco to check out their cute downtown area. The Main Street is blocked off in the summer for pedestrian traffic, outdoor seating at restaurants, and strolling among the shops.

We arrived at Vail around 3:00 pm and decided to drop our stuff off at the hotel and then go exploring. With all of the rain that we have been receiving this spring and summer the mountains were incredibly green and vibrant.

Our drive took us up to the Beaver Creek area. It was raining off and on so we grabbed rain jackets and hiking boots and set off to explore. The main shopping area of Beaver Creek was amazing. It reminded me of a European village.

Chris had already scouted the area online and knew there was a Village Loop trail that we could hike. It pretty much started up the side of the mountainside on a narrow path that wove through groves of really tall Aspen trees.

The path wasn’t full on muddy but definitely wet enough to “break in” my new boots so they didn’t look quite so new anymore. Definitely a beautiful area and hike.

I have heard periodically of a town called Minturn on the news. As we drove back to Vail, we took a right and ended up in this cute little town. 

The Main Street wasn’t very long but had a number of restaurant offerings. Unfortunately, three of the places we tried were closed. Chris and I opted for this newly opened restaurant called Agaves Mexican.

Funny sign on the door.

I thought the food was delicious.

College Kids on Instagram

Sunday morning after our Brainard hike, I checked my Instagram page and found that Bryce had found me and followed my simplyjolayne page. 

I chuckled and then posted a pic of the four students and tagged him. Throughout the day, the three girls followed my page as well. I tagged them in the picture as they followed me. Kind of fun to promote my page in a different kind of way.

Kristen Alone in the Dark

Sometimes teenagers don’t make the smartest choices. 

That was the case when Kristen and her group of friends wanted to get a better look at the stars and decided to go to a gravel pit about seven miles from our house. Kristen did not want to go, but peer pressure took her along. 

The kids had to cross a barbed wire fence and walked in the field until reaching the gravel pit. The group of two guys and four girls were planning to climb a crane to get a better view.

Kristen had her Birkenstock sandals on and couldn’t climb that well in them. Plus, she really didn’t want to do it in the first place. The group told her to wait for them, and one of the girls suggested she walk back to the truck. She sat in the dark of the field for about 40 minutes texting with friends, one of whom said he would come and get her. She was getting more and more nervous about being alone.

At that point, I decided to just check Kristen’s location on my phone because Chris was already sleeping and I was heading to bed. Her location showed that she was somewhere off of HWY 66, but nowhere that I was familiar with.

I heard Chris’ phone buzzing and went down to check it. Kristen had just called. I was about to call her back when I could hear Amy talking.

Kristen was still alone and scared. Amy and I got in the car to go find her. I should have put shoes on as I was in my pajamas and barefoot.

We had Kristen stay on the line with us as we drove and finally reached the vehicles of the kids she had come with. Kristen had just made it out of the field and was so relieved to see us.  Her keys were in Jude’s truck so we needed to get those before leaving.

Amy and I were both pretty ticked with these kids and finally got them on the phone to ream them out for leaving Kristen alone and for trespassing. (We got on Kristen’s case for trespassing as well).

Jude got the brunt of Amy’s harsh words and told him to get back to the car. He was acting pretty snotty and belligerent with her.

As they finally arrived, Amy got out of the car to confront the boys who were the oldest in the group and should have known better.

I stayed with Kristen (I had no shoes on). The girls in her group came to console her but all of the kids were dufuses for leaving her.

Lake Isabelle Hike

Chris made reservations at Brainard Lake Recreation Area for us to hike the Lake Isabelle hike via the Pawnee Pass Trail. I really think the reservation system will be one of those things from Covid that will continue. It allows the rangers to manage the activity levels throughout the park.

Our reservation was between the hours of 8 am to 10 am.

For those that didn’t have a reservation, they had to park at the lot outside of the park entrance and hike about 2.5 miles in. We passed a few people walking in as we drove up and then came upon this group of four college kids thumbing for a ride.

We stopped. We do not make it a practice to stop for hitch hikers, but figured this group of kids who would also be hiking would be okay. The four of them crammed into the back of Chris’ Audi and were so thankful that we stopped.

Two of the group were in Colorado for the summer visiting with friends, hiking, and having fun. There was Bryce, Nicole, Sydney and Danielle.

Chris mentioned that I would probably put them on my blog and Instagram page. I knew I would, so I got their names and took a picture of them as we dropped them off at the trailhead.

The Isabelle Trail was busy with young hikers, families, inexperienced hikers…lots of people. 

We started at the Long Lake Trailhead. We hiked in about .15 of a mile to reach the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area and just beyond that arrived at the Jean Lunning Trail Junction. Stay to the right if you want to continue on to Lake Isabelle. 

There was a short hike to Long Lake which seemed to be the destination for most of the hikers. We continued on past Long Lake to Lake Isabelle.

The trail grew in difficulty as we reached the West Jean Lunning Trail Junction and continued on to Lake Isabelle. We traversed rock fields, walked over snow, skirted over rocks along the shore line and then began to climb up to the falls toward the base of the glacier.

The view was awesome.

A little snack along the way.

We stopped at the glacier. I wasn’t comfortable with the “mountain” climbing we would have to do here, and knew I would be much more freaked out coming down.

We pulled out our hiking poles and with both Chris and I having one, traversed our way back toward the beginning of the trailhead. The poles helped immensely, especially walking across the snow pack and keeping from sliding down the hill.

We were surprised to come across this moose just off the trail. In fact, we almost missed it as we were focused on the trail.

At the East Jean Lunning Junction, we veered to the right and took the path that went around Long Lake. It was a lot muddier and involved crossing a few streams.

We looked for the Bryce and the girls as we returned to the parking lot in case they were around and wanted a ride back to their car. Not seeing them, we pulled off our boots and happily sank into the car seats.

New Computer

I got a new computer! I am so excited. My old computer just wasn’t handling the apps and programs I use. It was getting glitchy.

So excited for a new one and grateful for my handy husband who got it all set up for me. Chris is awesome. My computer is awesome.