Today’s Run: 8.2 miles, hill repeats, much better than yesterday!

Hold on tight, kids, this is gonna be a long one.

I ended yesterday’s post right before telling you about our hotel, so that’s where I’ll start today. We stayed at The Brook Forest Inn, and it was a great choice!

From their website: “The Historic Brook Forest Inn has roots dating back to 1909. Its Victorian architectural style and rustic charm have been preserved and updated to classic detail.” We stayed in the Versailles room, which had a queen-size bed, a daybed, and a bathroom — simple, but that’s all we needed. It was definitely old, but charming-old, not sketchy-old. I thought it was adorable.

A few more shots of the Inn:

From the back

The backyard was set up for a wedding; it would be a beautiful place for a small, simple wedding.

I think this is where its name came from…the brook. And the forest.

Big fireplace.

Like most mountain-town hotels, this one is not air-conditioned. It was fine at night with the windows open, but stuffy when we first arrived. So we decided to quickly get ready, head down early for dinner, and have a drink in the pub downstairs.

All gussied up

Dinner was ah-maze-ing. The restaurant in the inn is called The Chandeliers. I’m not sure why.

Oh, that’s why.

Remember yesterday, when I talked about splurging? This is where we did most of it.

We started with baked brie with honey and cranberry jam, which was delicious, and then ordered our entrees. I had chilean sea bass, which was “encrusted in black sesame with a vanilla butter sauce, over risotto with seasonal vegetables.” The fish and vanilla sauce were good, but what really stole the show was the risotto. Oh. My. Gosh. I wanted to marry it and have its risotto babies. If you go to Evergreen and eat only one thing, make it this risotto.

And what would an anniversary dinner be without dessert? We had a Kahlua bread pudding, which was divinely chocolatey and went perfectly with coffee.

After we finished our dessert, we took our stuffed bellies and our coffee back over to the pub to listen to the live music. It was just a guy with a guitar playing Buffet covers, but he was decent and it was fun.

Saturday, we got up early, loving the cool mountain air and the smell of pine trees coming in our window, and got ready for our hike. The Inn provided breakfast, which was typical hotel breakfast — cereal, toast, some sad-looking fruit — but the scenery was better than typical:

Coffee and trees by a brook…perfect!

We had originally planned to hike at Alderfer/Three Sisters Park, but as we drove that way, we spotted the trailhead for Maxwell Falls, which I had read was a beautiful, short hike. We had planned to stop for water before hiking, so we only had a not-quite-full bottle, but it was cool out and the hike was short, so we decided to give it a go. Terrific decision!The weather was nice and cool, and not very many people were out yet. We did the Lower Falls trail, but we never saw any falls. We did, however, see a lot of wildflowers and beautiful scenery, including this stream:

And this pretty little lady:

She stuck around for quite a while, until some other hiker’s dumb dog came running down the trail and scared her away. Leash laws, people. Follow them.

The trail eventually met up with the Upper Falls trail, which probably actually led to waterfalls, but we didn’t follow it all the way there. Our water was running low, and we didn’t want to be the idiots who come unprepared and get themselves in trouble. I was glad that we headed down when we did, anyway: we met a lot of people coming back down, and the parking lot at the trailhead was full,  so we wouldn’t have had much more quiet, uncrowded trail time anyway.

After we left the trail, we stopped at a convenience store to get some water and debated where to go next. We decided to head toward Morrison and stop wherever looked fun. We ended up going to Bear Creek Lake Park, which is not a hiking park — it’s all paved bike trails — but it still made for a nice walk. We were outside and together, which were my two main requirements for the day, so I was happy. And there were some pretty flowers.

I know that’s a weed, but it’s a pretty one.

 We ended the morning (which by then was early afternoon) by sticking our hot toes in the lake — a perfect ending to the morning — then cruised into Denver for lunch, then on home.

This was a pretty simple getaway, but it was just what we wanted for our anniversary. I can’t wait to go back to Evergreen and explore some more of the trails up there!

What was the best part of your weekend?