The HENDRICKSON Family: Colorado Trip

Monday, August 9th

We loaded the van and headed out to Colorado on Monday evening. We knew we would be doing a lot of late night/early morning driving, but that would mean we would have a full day the next day to start our fun out there. We let Sarah invite two of her friends to go with us this time. She invited Jax and Wyatt. We all loaded into our van and were able to put a lot of the luggage on the top in a soft carrier that we borrowed from my cousin.

Packed and ready to go... Silas, Sarah, Phoebe, Wyatt, Jax, and Eric.

Tuesday, August 10th

Tuesday we hiked some around the cabin, went to town for groceries, fished in the pond, picked flowers, played games, and had "Taco Tuesday" for dinner.

Wednesday, August 11th

On Wednesday we drove into Manitou Springs to walk around and look in some of the shops. We had afternoon reservations to ride the Cog Railway to the top and back down Pike's Peak. The Cog leaves from Manitou Springs.

We saw some deer as we drove out of Tranquil Acres towards Woodland Park and Manitou Springs.

In Manitou, the kids tried a few of the fresh spring fountains...

Below, waiting for our Cog train to take us to the top of Pike's Peak.

On the ride up Jax, Sarah, Phoebe, and I all sat on the 4-person side of the Cog. Wyatt, Eric, and Silas sat on the 6-person side of the Cog, right across the aisle from us.

We had great views of the mountains on the way up and saw some Marmots running around in the big rocks towards the top of Pike's Peak. At the top we went into the Visitor Center to look around, walked around the top area, climbed around in the boulder area, and took some pictures.

On our ride back down the mountain, Eric, Silas, Wyatt, and Sarah sat on the 4 - person side, and across the aisle from them was Jax, Phoebe, and myself.

We saw several Marmots in the big rocks as we started our ride down the mountain.

On our drive back to the cabin, closer to Divide, Colorado, as we turned into Tranquil Acres, we saw a big herd of Elk.

And, some more deer.

Thursday, August 12th

The Hummingbird feeders were already filled and hanging when we got to the cabin so we enjoyed watching the Hummingbirds come and go throughout the week.

We also kept seeing a little Chipmunk on a large rock behind our cabin.

Today we went to Elevenmile Canyon. It is one of our favorite places to go every time we make a trip to the cabin. Here we fished, hiked, had a picnic lunch, fed Chipmunks, and floated in the cold mountain water.

We started out by driving all the way (Eleven miles) to the end of the canyon, (the dam). Here we found a place to park and the trailhead that leads up to the top of a mountain and overlooks the canyon, the dam, and the beautiful lake on the other side of the dam.

We all made it to the top!

We ate our picnic lunch before fishing and floating.

We took the noodles for the kids to use for floating, but some other floaters let the kids borrow their innertubes for about 15 minutes too.

Friday, August 13th

On Friday we packed another picnic lunch and headed for Cripple Creek, Colorado While we were there we stopped at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine to look around, drove to see a new way of mining (strip mining), went to the visitor center, saw the Donkeys, ate our lunch in the park after walking up and down the old Cripple Creek main street.

Next, we drove to Victor, Colorado to see some other old gold mines and walk around this little old gold mining town's main street.

Back at the cabin later that afternoon we took a hike back behind the cabin in the Pike National Forest. We saw cool rock formations, beautiful flowers, and an old cabin, on our (approximately) 5 mile round trip hike.

Back at the cabin later that evening, Lindsee, EP, and Will arrived to spend the last day with us. We all relaxed and watched a movie together that night before bed.

Lindsee and Wyatt are NOT big tomato eaters, so they did a tomato challenge... See their faces below to determine how that went.....

Saturday, August 14th

On Saturday our plans were to hike the Craggs altogether. We also had plans of mushroom hunting. As we started to hike we decided that maybe mushroom hunting would be more fun so we took a vote and decided to just mushroom hunt along another trail near a running creek. EP is the mushroom hunting expert and he was our guide, teaching us all how to identify the "good" and "bad" mushrooms.

I found the first "good" mushrooms. It was very exciting, and fun to search.

Below, our kid crew, Phoebe, Will, Silas, Wyatt, Sarah, and Jax.

Phoebe found the biggest "good" mushroom.

Silas found a little butterfly as we hiked back down towards our vehicles. He carried it along for quite a ways.

Below are just some of the "good" mushrooms we found.

Below, our whole mushroom hunting, hiking, crew!

Back at the cabin EP worked hard sorting and cleaning up our mushroom haul. Then he cooked some for all of us to try. They were delicious!

The kids played outside while dinner was being prepared.

Back in the cabin for a picture with our haul of mushrooms and then the "mushroom tasting".

That night after dinner we all enjoyed some smores.

Then there was some game playing and we watched another movie before everyone went to bed.

Sunday August 15th

On Sunday morning we got up, packed and loaded the van, help clean up the cabin and set out for our drive back to Kansas. We had SO MUCH FUN. This was a GREAT trip!