I love that quote…in part because I adore John Muir, but mostly because sometimes, it’s so true. For several weeks, the mountains had been beckoning, and last weekend we finally took off to visit them. It was glorious. (Please excuse the fact that the following are all iPhone pictures. Someday I’ll carry a camera like a real blogger.)

We had a three-day weekend thanks to parent-teacher conferences, and after several busy weeks, it was a perfect time to get away. We left late Friday morning (I wanted to clean the house before we left so we wouldn’t have to do it Sunday) and headed up toward Vail.

Hello, beautiful. I get excited every time we top this hill out of Denver.

We got there around 4:00 and checked in to our resort. We got a ridiculously good deal and had a full condo — two bathrooms, full kitchen, etc. It was awesome. Roughing it we were not.

It was too late then to do any hiking, so we explored the town of Edwards (where we were staying). It’s not a bad little town — pricey, but that’s to be expected in the Vail area!

We walked along the Riverwalk and up into a neighborhood with houses that cost more money than I will make in my life. Impressive.

We headed back to the condo fairly early and made dinner (having a full kitchen made staying on the Whole30 much easier!), then relaxed with books by the fire. Wonderful.

Saturday morning was chilly, so we took our sweet time about getting out of the condo and to the trail. We decided to start with Gore Creek Trail near Vail. Good choice, us. Here’s a photo dump of pictures Jordan took on our hike:

The trail leads up to a lake, but we didn’t make it that high. We started getting into deeper snow, and we had zero snow gear, so we headed back down the trail and stopped to have lunch on a rock and enjoy the scenery. As Jordan said, we’d found a “viewtastic” place to eat.

We had considered hitting another trail, since it was early afternoon, but someone (I won’t say who, but it starts with a J and ends with an ordan) took a tumble on the way down. He was fine (thank goodness!) but wet and muddy, so we decided to head back and clean up instead of doing more hiking. Plus I really had to pee and was tired of doing it behind a bush.

We went back to the condo and showered up, then went back down to Edwards to dink around some more. We took our shopping very seriously.

We had dinner reservations at a place called Dish, so that’s where we went after our shopping adventure. I did some research ahead of time to make sure they would have things I could eat; I had a salad and some delectable ahi. Nom nom. I was very tempted to also have a glass of wine, but I held strong and Whole30’d it along. The food was very good, though, and apparently they have a Denver location; we’ll have to hit it up!

We went to bed that night tired and happy — the best way to end a day of mini-vacation. We headed home Sunday morning… even though we were reeeeally tempted to call in sick Monday and stay another day.

 

What’s your favorite weekend getaway?

Colorado readers: What are some trails in the Vail area we should do next time? This was the first time we’d played around up there — usually we’re rushing through to get to or home from my parents’ house — and we want to go back!