Colorado 2011

Well another wonderfully beautiful trip to Colorado has come and gone for the Padghams. It's always so sad when our vacation there is over. Especially when we have to come back home to the worst heat wave our nation has seen in years. Temperatures in Dallas (as well as most of the rest of the south) are ranging from 105 to 111 for highs. It's miserable out there. So I keep looking at my Colorado pictures and daydreaming of the nice cool weather we had...
True happiness...
This sweet girl visited us a lot...
Cole really enjoyed helping with the fire wood and simply goofing off.
Topher was a little ham as usual. Uncle Jon got these great shots. This kid is just so photogenic...
Grandpa carved a cool boat out of a piece of fire wood. Topher loved playing with that thing in Squaw Creek...Topher just being silly...
...and very sweet. We told him he shouldn't pick the flowers, but he had trouble understanding that. This is one of my favorite shots. Last year we recreated a photo taken of Bryan and Jon as kids on what they nicknamed "horse rock". This year, we tried to recreate this old picture of Bryan when he was Topher's age fishing with his dad and grandpa. We went back to the exact same spot. Here's the result...
BEAR ATTACK!! Well, sort of. Our camp site got attacked at around 4am one morning. A bear had hit up another camp site down the road a few nights before ours. We heard him (or her) clanking our skillets and tossing things around. Couldn't see him though because it was too dark. But we saw the damage first thing the next morning. I didn't get many pictures, but for the most part, he tore up some water bottles, a plastic vodka bottle (I don't think he drank too much of it), a couple of old popcorn tins (one of which completely disappeared and we never found it), and even had a little fun with the bottle of lighter fluid. I did get a couple of pics, though...
Believe it or not, I actually got some exercise in on this vacation. My brother-in-law Jon and I did one of my boot camp workouts on Monday. Tuesday morning I got up and ran. It was such a beautiful trail to run. Here are a couple of pics of my route. The rest of the week was full of hiking and such, so I got a workout in 5 out of the 8 days I was there.
Bryan and I took an overnight backpacking trip up to the Continental Divide again this year. This year we took the Weminuche Trail. It's about 5.5 miles each way. It took us 3 hours to get there. Except for our heavy backpacks and the fact that it was quite a steep trail, overall it seemed to be a pretty easy hike. We got really lucky again this year in that it didn't start raining until after we got our camp site all set up. And it was a very soothing, soft rain so we welcomed it. It hailed on us for about 10 minutes, but nothing big. Just tiny pellet sized hail. It was actually really cool to watch. We got up the next morning and hiked another hour to a spot where we could see the "Window" and the "Rio Grande Pyramid". Very pretty site. I think the next time we do that hike, we'll make it at least a day longer so we can hike the entire way up to the Window. It would have taken us another 3 hours at least and we just didn't have the time this year. But at least we got to see it.
Heading out...
Hiking the Continental Divide

CampHail at our camp site
Sunrise on the Continental Divide
Close up of "The Window"
"The Window" and "The Rio Grande Pyramid"...
We took a day trip up to Brewster Park with Topher but didn't get much fishing done. Topher was way more interested in all the big puddles we got to drive through on the way there and couldn't wait to leave so we could do it all again. Bryan did manage to catch a really nice size fish, though.
Bryan's catch of the day
Snow on the mountain topThis is the view from Sawmill Canyon (where we go to get fire wood). Look at all the snow still on the mountain tops. With the horrible temperatures the country is dealing with right now, it's hard to believe there's snow left anywhere. But here's proof...
Just another beautiful view from Sawmill Canyon...
There is simply no way we'd ever go to Thirty Mile without stopping at Freemon's at least once for a fantastic cheeseburger and fries and some of their yummilicious ice cream. This is their SMALL ice cream cone. It's $3. For just $2 more, you can get double this. It's crazy. This is my favorite, Butter Pecan. Mmmmmmmm...
And finally, our family picture. Unfortunately, we forgot to get an all-Padgham Family photo, but we did get one of our little Padgham family...
Sure can't wait to get back out there next summer.