6-2-11 4 Year Anniversary

Four years ago today (as in the first Saturday in June) we were officially moved to Colorado. The day after Nick graduated from 8th grade, I packed two cats, two kids, a dog, a father in law, and a ton of stuff in the minivan and made the 1000 mile drive to our new home.

That Saturday Mom and Dad came and we all set out for Mt. Evans.

We made the rookie mistake of thinking because it was so warm in our neighborhood we didn't need jackets. We went from 80­° to 30° at the top of the mountain.

Some photos of that day:

 this is the one where Sammi said, "I'd forgotten how much weight you've lost!"

 Co-opted jackets from Mom and Dad

The newly minted 8th grade graduate

So today Sammi and I took to the mountains for a new adventure. 

Unfortunately, Herman's Gulch turned out to be a premature choice for early June. We were just starting the real climb when we were stymied by impassable drifts that would have required snow shoes. Post-holing is the process where hikers sink through the snow, causing holes that refreeze and make skiers crazy. However, it is JUNE, so they will have to forgive us this time around.

Some video from our hike:

At the Trail Head:

The trail that was also a stream:

Here is Sammi post holing her way back down our give-up-and-turn-around spot:

And here is one of the places where the sun had slicked up the ice very nicely. I love that she was a good sport about me cracking up and gave me the "big finish" I was requesting between gasps.

We headed over to Echo Lake, where we went for the first time four years ago, and had lunch at the lodge. When I parked my car it was at 29999 miles, or one mile until it was out of warranty. As we left, we pulled over and took a picture of the milestone. I can't think of a better place

We stopped and got our feet in the water at the falls on the way back down:

And we were mesmerized by the trees, especially this battle scarred one that soared so high over our heads:

We even made it back to Denver in time for Sonic Happy Hour. Since there isn't one close to us, this is a pretty big deal and was a fun cap on the day.

We got home in time to see Bob and Nick off to meet Tim Tebow and get Nick's copy of his autobiography signed.

Then I spent the better part of the evening working on this blog post. . . well, not THIS post, because the one I worked on for so long and waited so patiently for each individual upload crashed. And despite Blogger confirming its autosave every 2 minutes, it was gone into the black hole of the internets, never to be recovered. After the wailing and gnashing of teeth was finished, I started again, as if there was any other choice, and was surprised at how quickly the uploads ran this time around. Whatever it was that caused the crash was probably slowing the entire site down to a crawl, too.

All told, I'm editing this last piece before 10:00 pm and pretty satisfied with the day. I've come to the conclusion that I'm just going to have to live with the chronic hip pain and see whether it becomes just another part of life or fades away on its own. Right now it feels a little like someone has fastened a clamp to it and is pulling outwards in some slow, tight torture. But everything around that spot of pain feels almost numb. I'm chalking it up to scar tissue and thinking about my tree above and figuring on soaring in spite of it all.