A Great Day Off

Friday's are our day off. We usually sleep in late (which we did this morning), get up and either fix breakfast or go out to breakfast, and then try to figure out what we want to do. Today it was pretty easy to figure out what to do. We had spring like 60 degree weather (you read that right) and decided to go for a drive. Kirk has taken up bird watching (and I am considering it) and wanted to head up one of the canyons here in Boulder to look for a golden eagle's nest he had been told about. We found it and I must say it was pretty amazing. We then decided to go for a hike at Heil's Ranch. We have never been there and it was off the main road of the canyon. It was a beautiful place as you will see in the pictures following.

The sky was a perfect blue, not a cloud to be seen anywhere.

As we started our hike we came upon this sign. We have a lot of mountain lion stories from around Boulder, which we shared with Carrie and Shayne last week. I have to admit when I saw this sign I thought twice about embarking on our hike. The chances of running across a mountain lion in the middle of the day would be rare, but as the sign said, it could happen.

I am glad that I didn't let the sign prevent us from going on the hike as it was absolutely beautiful and peaceful out there. We saw two golden eagles flying overhead which is just breathtaking. They are so graceful in flight.

Kirk and his glasses (binoculars) as he calls them.

This was the only wildlife, except for the eagles, that we saw. I liked the picture of the cow under the roots of the tree.

To end our day, we went to Mateo's restaurant here in Boulder. Several of the community groups got together and gave us a gift card to his restaurant and John's restaurant. We decided to try out Mateo's tonight and it was amazing food! I had the Escolar (a white fish) that had been flown in fresh from Hawaii today! Kirk said it was the best fish he had ever had. One of the owners of the restaurant came up and gave us a complimentary glass of a dessert wine to go with our dessert. She said she heard that we were enjoying our experience at the restaurant and wanted to say thank you. Our waiter got a big tip!