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?

Today’s Run: 12 miles. Bad ones.

This was the roughest run I’ve had in quite some time, most likely because of all the eating I did this weekend. I eat healthily most of the time, but I think it’s perfectly okay to splurge sometimes — especially when you’re celebrating, say, a five-year anniversary. So splurge I did, and this run was my body’s way of telling me that that splurgey-time is over and it’s time to get back on track. Thanks, body. Maybe send a friendly reminder text next time.

Enough about that. Let’s talk about that splurge-tastic weekend instead.

Originally, we had planned to do a two-day, one-night getaway for our anniversary, but then I saw that Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, would be in Boulder on Thursday night to discuss and sign his new book.

(source)

A few teacher-friends and I wanted to go, and J and I figured it was silly to drive home from Boulder at 9 p.m. and leave again for Evergreen early Friday morning, so we got a hotel in Broomfield and made a two-night getaway of it instead.

We stayed Thursday night in an aloft Hotel, which is apparently a new branch of  Starwood Hotels.

It was kind of a cool place — very trendy and modern. Too trendy to even capitalize its name. It was a nice place, though; I’d stay there again.

Friday started with an early run for me, then J and I cleaned up, grabbed some breakfast, and headed off to Evergreen.

Originally, we thought that maybe we’d do a short hike on Friday, but by the time we got to Evergreen (around 10:30), it was already pretty warm out,  so we decided to wait until Saturday to hike and spend Friday exploring the town. We did a little shopping, grabbed a little lunch, then headed over to Evergreen Lake.

A few weeks ago, I bought a Groupon for paddleboat rentals at Evergreen Lake. We were looking forward to paddleboating…until we realized that you can’t use a Groupon that you forgot to print. Whoops. So we decided just to walk around the lake and watch all the other paddleboaters/kayakers/SUP-ers.

(not a bad view from here!)

As we walked, we saw this gate.

I think you guys forgot something… like the rest of your fence.

Eventually, we cruised on back to our hotel to get ready for dinner. Which I will tell you all about later, when my computer decides to stop kicking me off the Internet every five minutes. Enjoy your Sunday!

What do you wish your body would tell you via text?