A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!!

That is the only way to describe our vacation this past week. We had such a great time, and finally had some true quality time together, and it was just flat out awesome!! We packed so much into one week, it'll be hard to do it justice. We arrived back to our sweet home at 3:00am Saturday night/Sunday morning and it was nice to be back. But really, wouldn't a once a month vacation be nice? We have a ton of pictures, but way too many to load onto the blog at once, so hopefully in the next couple of days we'll get a website up with the rest. Here are some of our favorites with, as always, some stories.

We left on Saturday around 11am and headed up north in our little corolla. She tolerated the trip well, I might add. We drove all day/night until about 11 when we decided to pull into a rest stop to sleep for a couple of hours. However, we were up and awake by 4 so we decided to explore. Since nothing was open, obviously, we drove up some random road and checked out the sweet houses, and then it was sunrise. It worked out well for us as sunrise was beautiful.
After this we decided since we had time before our rafting appointment we would drive up Pike's Peak. We were not prepared for the chilly weather, but it was gorgeous up there. About this point I realized I would be climbing/hiking up another 14,000 ft mountain and started to be a little fearful. Despite that, I can't believe how awesome the world is from that height.
On our way up we had driven by this pretty lake and decided to stop on our way back down. How sweet would it be to have this view every day?After Pike's we headed towards the Royal Gorge for some whitewater rafting, which I was oh so excited to do! Having never done this before, I was like a child with my excitement. Then they started talking about what to do if something went wrong, and Brad had marks in his leg from my hand grip. Hahaha. It was so great though! I think it will become one of our new favorite things! Here we are waiting for life jackets, that was pretty much his expression to me. Kidding only kidding, only for the picture. On our raft as we waited to go through the most intense rapid, where we got stuck on a rock. Hahaha. I didn't laugh then though, I was a little scared. They made two ladies and me get out of the boat and get pulled to the rocks with a rope while the other four remained and tried to get our raft off the rock. I didn't like seeing Brad hanging out of the boat in rapids like that; however, he apparently is fearless. They all saved the day and the three of us were able to return to our raft. We didn't feel quite as bad after one of the other rafts in our group lost 5 of their 7, including their guide. Whoa. They said that rapid had been exceptionally rough that weekend. It was awesome though! After our trip, with our fellow rafters and our guide. This was a really sweet group. The two behind Brad were on their 18th anniversary. It was a party for the anniversaries. They were from Oklahoma, the other two ladies are mom and daughter from Iowa, and then us. Our guide has been doing this for 10 years, and had also guided tours in Costa Rica. He pretty much has an awesome job. So after rafting we stayed in Colorado Springs for the evening and then headed to Boulder for our actual anniversary. Now here comes a story. Let me just tell you, if you're headed to Boulder anytime soon, the Mariott is the place to stay. The staff members are just so sweet. We checked in early afternoon, and as we were at the desk one of the employees, Tucker, asked what brought us to Boulder. We said "Oh it's our anniversary, so we're going all around Colorado, and decided we would spend the actual day in Boulder (or something like that)." Mind you, as this was going on there was another guest checking out. Tucker, being the AWESOME guy he is, started typing on Helena's computer and she looked very confused, then Beth joined in and all of them kept apologizing for the inconvenience of the wait. We laughed since it had taken a whole 3 seconds of making us wait, and were very confused since we had already confirmed our room about an hour prior to this. Next we knew, though, Helena had a map out giving us good ideas for dinner and how to get to places in Boulder and we had our key and off we went.
As we got in the elevator, we noticed that 4th floor rooms said concierge guest rooms, and we thought that was strange but we continued on. We headed down the hall and thought good night our room is far away, and then we came to a set of double doors that had our room number on it. We went through to another door that had our room number (there were two rooms behind the double doors) and opened it up and this is what was behind. Holy cow...HUGE right? Then there is this...
Yea, a view. With a balcony. We stood there for a few minutes very confused, and then decided that Tucker must of given us an upgrade (thus the confusion downstairs) which we were really impressed with because we had pricelined this hotel in the first place. We decided to head out for a walk and then stop by the desk and thank them for the amazing room when we saw Tucker in the hallway. We said "Thanks so much! That was such an awesome surprise!" He said "We wanted to hook you guys up, anniversaries come few and far between it seems." To which we replied "Well this is our first of many, so thanks for making it so special!" Then we headed out on our walk, but it gets better! After we returned back from our walk we relaxed a little bit and then decided to get some dinner. Well, we couldn't decide where we wanted to go, and there was a retaurant in the hotel that was ranked as one of the top places to eat in Boulder, so we decided to try that instead of leaving; I mean why not, it's right there. Well, we were the only people in the whole place and our waiter was awesome! He had good tips and he was friendly and sweet. (Jason, and Darcy was with him). After we were finished eating, they asked us about dessert, which was a no way at this moment after that big of a meal could we have dessert. We said that we might stop by on our way back in after we walked off our meal and then asked it they would take a picture for us, so we could have the token anniversary picture. They said yes, and then Jason said "Look, after your walk, if you're feeling like dessert come back here, its' on me." At this point, we were seriously overwhelmed, I mean, everyone on that staff was just great. So we thanked him, and went upstairs to get some warmer clothes on for our walk. We changed, and were seriously in the room probably 5 minutes, before we noticed the following sitting on our table. I mean seriously. They rocked. So we didn't end up taking Jason up on the offer, since apparently the front desk beat him to it. Chocolate covered strawberries...one of our absolute favorite treats. So, we sat on our balcony (the only room in the hotel with one) and enjoyed the mountains and our strawberries. It was like a dream. Awesome. So that was our actual anniversary. Words couldn't describe how special we felt. Now on to the less pampered part of our trip.

We left Boulder and headed towards Estes Park to get our pass to camp up on Long's Peak. Below is a view from our campsite at the base of Long's. Isn't it gorgeous!! For those who don't know, Long's Peak is 14,259 feet, and Brad has hiked to summit twice. I, on the other hand, had not hiked a day of my life, or really camped for that matter. However, this was my dream trip, so Brad had me train for it, and hooked me up with the articles I would need for the trip and off we went. I was so excited, but overwhelmed. It's a little less than an 8 mile hike to summit, which I thought would be no problem. Hahaha. So here is our first night, this was at a camp where we could make a fire, and it was golden.
This little guy was playing with this tarp for a good five minutes while we watched. Later on I'll get the video I took of it. It's pretty funny. So Wednesday morning we started our hike. I honestly have never done anything so physically difficult in my life. It was amazing. I mean to be in a place where you can see God's amazing creation and be pushing harder than you've ever had to push. Awesome. The picture is at the split of the trail. We had a group of men that we had been passing and following all day and they took our picture for us then headed on the other way of the split. At this point, we had been walking I think for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, and it felt like we would never get to where we were headed. All uphill. As we were eating, this little man kept trying to steal our food. Brave they are. So, on we hiked up to the Boulder Field, which truly is a field of boulders. We had left around 8:15-8:30 ish and arrived at 12:45-1ish. If that gives you any idea of how tough it was, because it was only a 6 mile hike. As we passed people who were coming down they said they had turned around at the keyhole because the winds were too strong and hadn't made it to the summit. We were bummed but we kept on hoping that the next day when we got up the weather would be nice enough to make it up to the summit. Here is our campsite for the evening. Let me just tell you, it snowed that night. Just a little, more like sleet, but it was chilly. Thursday morning we were up by 5 and hiking by 6 to hopefuly make it to the summit before it was too late to get back down the mountain that afternoon. It was beautiful, but tough. I, unforunately, had decided that now the altitude would affect me and was struggling with nausea on our way up to the keyhole. Plus, the wind was insane. We were determined though. We made it up to the keyhole, which is pictured below, and the wind was just crazy. We had to pass through, and then decide if we were going to go on, and we just decided it wasn't worth that. We had had so much fun, but it was unbelievably cold with that wind, neither of us had gloves on, and it's not safe with all that wind at that elevation. So, sadly we turned back. I was disappointed, it felt like if I had moved faster in the morning instead of feeling sick to my stomach then maybe we could have made it anyway. Turns out, there were multiple groups that turned around because of the wind. They said it just wasn't worth it to be unsafe with the wind like that, it made me feel much better. So we headed back down the mountain, broke camp, and hiked our 6 miles back. Needless to say, I now have a life goal of making summit at Long's Peak. We're going back during a really summer month instead of when it's getting cold on the mountain. The next day it really did snow up there, we could see it from Estes, so we were glad we weren't there that night. This is on our way back down, all packed up and ready to head out. If you look close you can see I was wearing my extra pair of socks as gloves.
This waterfall was just beautiful. The sun hit it just right.
Delayering after I had on 4 layers of shirts, and 4 of pants in the morning. Austin has made me weak to the cold. At the very end of the day after we had made it all the way back to base. It was amazing. I want to go backpacking all the time. It is tough and I love it. Brad's great at it, so it's fun to do something like that together. We will be topping Long's at some point, there are no questions about that. We'd like to do some others in Colorado too. I LOVED IT!! It was the perfect 3 days!We spent the next night in Estes. These elk were everywhere, eating all the potted plants in town! It was awesome!Friday morning, Brad got up early and went to get coffee and took some pictures on his way. This was Long's that morning, covered in snow like I said.
And more of the elk...We then headed to Rocky Mountain National Park to drive the Trail Ridge Road and get some beautiful pictures! I'll add more of these soon...it's amazing up there. We did this when I was 12, so it was really neat to go back and see all these places again!B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.

Saturay morning we headed for home. Texas is a huge state, most of our driving was just in THIS state. Wow.

#1 story from the trip home. Brad has never had a speeding ticket, I on the other hand have had one, and a few too many pull overs, but only warnings. Anyways, we're driving home, very into our audio book we had purchased, and the next thing we knew we were being pulled over. Apparently the speed limit drops 5 mph at night time in Texas (we truly had not noticed those signs) and the guy stopped us for it. I told him we worked at night, and he said sure. Brad didn't like me making jokes. The officer was very nice though, told us to watch the limit, and gave Brad only a warning. Thank goodness. We didn't drive 1mph over the speed limit the rest of the way home. Here is Brad being sad for his warning. Overall, it was amazing! I would do it every year if we could. If anyone wants to join us on a hike, we would love it! It's great to be home though! We were able to grab lunch with some friends yesterday, and were so thankful to be back in Austin. So that is all for my encyclopedia length post. Our annivesary trip was amazing, and my husband rocks! Have a great week all!