Tapestry Woven by Grace: Vacation

Kirk and I started our two week vacation last week. Our plan........go camping in Colorado for 5 days, travel to Santa Fe, NM and spend the night, head over to Flagstaff, AZ and spend the night and end up at our final destination Sedona, AZ for a week. Here is a recap of our adventures to date.

Mueller State Park (Sunday afternoon thru Thursday morning)
After church last Sunday (June 15) we loaded up the truck and with a borrowed pop-up camper in tow, headed to Mueller State Park, which is west of Colorado Springs. Now mind you, I'm not much of a "roughing it" type of girl but I agreed to go camping as long as the campsite had bathroom and shower facilities. (Kirk did a great job in positioning us close to the facilities for those late night runs.) It was so relaxing and we had an absolute blast. I was overly cautious about the bears which meant we had to keep all the food in the truck (a pop up tent camper is not considered a hard sided vehicle) along with the cooking utensils per the flyer they gave us. We didn't see a bear (which in this case is a good thing) but some people we met said they saw a bobcat run across the road near their RV which was about 7 spaces down from us. We knew there were cats in the area based on a question we had asked a Park Ranger about something we had seen on a hike but didn't think someone would actually see one!

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the experience. The park was absolutely gorgeous and the weather was perfect, warm days and very cool nights (which made for some good snuggling). There were a lot of trails in the park and we ended up doing two gorgeous hikes. On one of the days we drove back toward Colorado Springs and went to the Garden of the Gods. It is land that was donated to the city of Colorado Springs, that was turned into a park, with the request that it always be free to the public. We also visted Cripple Creek, an old mining town near the park. Every time I saw the name of the town I couldn't help but think of the chorus to the song Up on Cripple Creek (up on Cripple Creek she sends me, if I spring a leak she mends me......).

Hike #1 - Peak View