6.23.09- Day 37

Hiking today! We were going to go with Carissa and Andy, but Carissa ended up having a meeting, so we rescheduled friend hiking. Al couldn't sleep all night, so we left around 7am to go hiking at Golden Gate Canyon State Park. (so he could get sleep later in the day). He was really great and packed lunches and water. Then he patiently got me up (sometimes that's hard since I'm not so much a morning person). It was a nice drive (only 1 hour) to the park entrance. We registered our car then drove to the start site of our planned hike. We thought we had found the trail and started following it, then ended up at another campsite. We asked a couple park rangers about the trail, since the markings were misleading and we thought we knew where to go from there. However, after walking through the woods, we ended up on a dirt road that lead back to the same campsite we were at before! We did see a hummingbird though. It was really cool. It was flying, then perched on a branch for a while. Needless to say, we were both frustrated that we could not find the trail. Finally, we went back to our starting point and found a different path. Luckily, after a while we started spotting trail signs! We found raccoon trail! It was really funny- I told Al, "look there is a raccoon" (he thought I was serious and started looking everywhere), but I just meant I saw a sign for the raccoon trail. So, as if to make up for having no signs at the trailhead, there was a sign about every 20 ft later on just to make sure we still knew we were on the trail. We had a very lovely hike after that. Awesomely huge aspens, beautiful scenery, Panorama Point (a picturesque view of the continental divide), and time with the hubby. After the hike, I drove home (because Al was very tired, having not slept the night before). It felt so good to get up to the mountains.

Also today: mailing my mom's bday present, returning some items to Walmart, maxing out our grocery envelope (we're using the envelope system currently), a nap, some tv, and painting. Also got a good rain this afternoon!