Labor Day Visitors

Dwight, Jenny, and their Elisabeth come to explore Colorado for a week. Elisabeth fills our cabinets with baby food, renames the cat "Memet," and completely charms and entertains us. We get to share some of our favorite places with them, and in return they share their company and Dwight's delicious cooking with us.

Indian Peaks Wilderness August 2010

Back in March, when the weather was cold and damp and summer felt like forever away, I started dreaming of sleeping outside amongst the mountains. Campsite reservations during summer weekends are insanely hard to come by, and as I started looking around, I found that many campsites had already been filled in March. So I randomly picked a weekend and booked a large campsite, assuming we'd come up with plan sometime in the coming 5 months. The Indian Peaks had been on our go-to list for a while. All we needed was a campsite and a few friends.

We spent Saturday afternoon ambling along the Lake Isabelle trail with friends, some hiking, some staying around the lakes to fish. The weather became cool and cloudy and ended in a rainy evening back at the campsite.

Sunday morning was cloudless, with a fall-like breeze. The sixty degree sunshine provided some welcome relief from the ninety degree heat back home. Doug and I decided to stick around for the day and hike the Blue Lake trail. We spent a few happy hours surrounded by deep greens and wildflowers. Our relatively early start meant that we essentially had the whole basin to ourselves before heading back to the trailhead.

Rocky Mountain Folks Fest August 2010

What better way to spend a hot summer weekend than with some of your favorite folks listening to some of your favorite folk? Jake, beloved cousin and mandolin extraordinaire for the band Joy Kills Sorrow, reserved us tickets (which we learned upon arrival were actually backstage passes) for a weekend of outdoor music in the mountains. Aside from the JKS show, we caught some other revered acts as well -- Ani Difranco, Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, and a few more.

Joy Kills Sorrow. They demolish sorrow with the power of bluegrass. Check them out.