Cody completes his first 14er - Quandary Peak

Back in 2009 Steffen and I did this peak, and today Cody completed his first 14er - Quandary  We did the hike with our friend Vivek and Tyler came along to complete his second 14er.  This was a long 6.9 miles, with the last 3/4 of a mile gaining over 1,100 feet so pretty steep.  Cody did a great job to get this done, and on the way we saw a few mountain sheep.

Cody reading there are no easy 14'ers

No Ladder, but a small bridge

Only 1,100 feet to go

Who is that behind us?

We made it

Thanks Vivek

Tough climb

Home Depot Pencil Case

Cody and Tyler got a chance to get another Home Depot project done today.  They built a skateboard pencil case.

Working on my project

Ready to hammer

Finsihed

RMNP camping and hiking cub lake

After our hike of twin sisters and a quick lunch, we headed to RMNP, setup our tent, did some Kumon and then started off on a small hike.  We took the trail to cub lake, and as we had some time, we decided that we would keep going for a little longer.  As our turnaround time came, I looked at the distance and thought that we were close, so we might as well try and get there, as we had done this hike 4 or 5 times and never got there. Turns out the last half mile or so is all uphill and to make it worse it decided to rain pretty heavily.

We did make it to the end, but when we got back into the campsite, we decided that it was too rainy to cook and enjoy our food so headed into town. After dinner we were all tired so settled down to try and sleep 3 boys into a two man small tent.  Tyler went to sleep (Taking all the covers), Cody spent the night turning and disturbing Daddy.

We woke up to rain, but there was a small break in the rain showers, so Tyler made scrambled eggs, I did bacon and hash browns and we managed to eat it all, and pack everything up in the relative dry.

There are animals in RMNP

Finally, cub lake

Raining and horrible

It's further than it looks

Scrambled egg boy

Breakfast of champions

Hiking Twin Sisters

We went camping on Thursday to RMNP, as we couldn't check in until 1pm, we woke up early and went to hike twin sisters in preparation for our 14er this weekend.

The boys were excellent, as we hiked a lot of switchbacks, crossed the flood debris, and the boulders until we got to the top after two and a half hours. A quick stop at the top for refreshments, then back down in 2 hours.

Start of the trail

Flood damage

We made it

Boys on top

Tale of the trip

Enjoying our Philly Cheese

Molly Brown house and State Capitol

We visited the Molly Brown house today, and then also stopped off at the State Capitol to see the mile high steps.

The tour is interesting, but no photographs.  The State Capitol is much bigger of course and the tour is okay.

Outside Molly Brown House

Standing tall

Inside the rotunda

Ready for our tour

National Night Out

We went to National Night Out tonight to check out the Police and Fire shows.  We got to see inside a helicopter, watch a car get chopped up and finished the night with a demonstration of how quickly a fire can take hold (it is super quick and super hot!).

Helicopter behind you

Ready for takeoff

Riding on my bike

Ready to go to jail

Chopping off the roof

After 30 seconds

After 2 minutes

2 Hawks in the garden

This morning we had 2 hawks in the garden. One on the fence and the other on the grass eating some sort of prey.

Brown Hawk down