June 10th 2018

Good MORNING from the Pawnee Buttes National Grassland!!!

Seriously waking up to these views make a person never want to go home.

This day was filled with a large amount of amazing firsts. We opted for a quick oatmeal breakfast, gathered our hiking gear and hit the trails for our first dry river bed hiking experience. We encountered a variety of flowers, cactus, odd mushrooms, lots of dragonflies and our first wild lizard all in just a 2 mile hike! Ill show little snippets to keep this blog shorter but keep your eye out for a more in depth look at this hike in Week 24 in 52 Week Hike Challenge blogs!

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Up next was starting the ascend to the mountains! Driving into Denver and watching the mountains slowly appear and grow in such massive size gave me goosebumps and still does. That feeling was like I finally found home, that same wonderful feeling I felt while vising Yellowstone and physically seeing a mountain for the fist time and falling so deeply in love with them.

The fresh crisp air and beautiful rivers of Colorado sold me! So much so this would be our furthest state and the one we spent the most time in. Denver was not for us though and we literally used the interstate to drive through as quick as possible to get back to comfort of country roads.

You’ll never guess it but we found for a 3rd night in a row a free campsite! This certain one was a challenge to find due to lost service and not well marked road, we actually passed the road and did not realize till about 20 mins later. Hiding on Forest Road 550 just an hour outside of Denver in the Pike National Forest our first mountain stay at an elevation of 7,878 feet would be. Bear Country!! Washboard, dirt road brings you to campsites sparingly placed but damn close to the road which would pose a problem. We opted to go with one of the first ones we found instead of exploring down the way more due to time restraints on daylight, all camp duties to be done and wanting to just relax a bit after an eventful day of an already 2 mile hike and driving for hours.

I was dancing on air getting out of that SUV and finally being surrounded by what I desired most, the deep woods of Colorado mountains! Let me set the mood for our first Colorado mountain stay…..Kip Moore Wild Ones streaming out of the radio, beer in hands, giddy Phoenix freely running around exploring, me grinning ear to ear and dancing around without a care! I joyfully run to the road to with the sun getting in set position to snap all the pics I could.  My curiosity gets the best of me and off I went down the dirt road to explore the scenery. Eventually enticing Jason and Phoenix to come out so I could get some snaps and of course at this point Phoenix was half naked again. I swear this child does not believe in keeping clothes on and let me tell ya this was not the place so much dust was flying around with passing cars that I was finding dirt in places I didn’t know it could get. We eventually moved the SUV to have some sort of barrier. So much dust was kicked up that our portable cd player no longer worked after this night.

Got a pretty good scare right before bed from a curious cute little fox rustling the bushes just below our camp then spent a good amount of the night paranoid about bears. Listening to deeply to sounds make them turn into all sorts of things in a racing mind lol. It didn’t help that Phoenix had a rough time sleeping with a plugged nose and cough. Nonetheless it was another adventurous day to be blessed with. Till tomorrow….thanks for following along.

P.S Mission find a shower was on 🙂

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