Mark's First Ever Blog--the Guy's Trip

Mark here... Denisa is making encouraging me to write my first blog.  I have always appreciated how well Denisa writes and how much work she puts into documenting our travels in this blog.  But since I took a rare trip without Denisa, I will blurt out a few lines and plop in a few pictures to record this fun trip.

Months ago our sons came up with the idea of the first ever father/son/son trip. Our family has always enjoyed the mountains, so it was decided that the Sangre de Cristo mountains would be our destination for this inaugural trip.                                                               

Luke researched and booked a very nice cabin using "Vrbo" in the foothills of the mountains 20 miles north of Westcliffe, Colorado, on Copper Gulch road.  If you are ever looking for a place to stay in this area, we can highly recommend "Pastor John's" 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, extra clean cabin.

The cabin is in a beautiful mountain setting with great views from the front porch and some local wildlife (if you call hand-fed deer and turkeys wildlife).

The cabin is fairly remote with a 40-minute drive to Canon City to the north, or Westcliffe to the south. So it was decided that we would buy groceries at a Canon City grocery store and cook all of our meals at the cabin.  With this being a "guy trip," I was concerned that I might lose weight on this vacation. But I am pleased to report that my sons are great cooks and we ate well every day, including a nice hearty breakfast each morning.

We only had a short long-weekend for this trip, so we planned one day travel to the cabin, two days of hiking, and one day to return home.  For our first day of hiking we started right from our cabin and went up into the rocks, trees, and mountains. The 27 acres that Pastor John owns around the cabin backs up to the Sangre de Cristo wilderness area, and made a great area to scramble and roam without any formal trails.  

The beautiful snow-covered peaks that we saw in the distance on this hike, will be the destination for tomorrow's hike.

We were thankful to have our phone GPS to guide us back to the cabin.  With no trail, steep rocky scrambling, thick forest, and bush-whacking, it sure seemed like we went further than 3 1/2 miles today.

I can tell that I am missing my regular hiking partner (Denisa) because I stopped and took a picture that is normally her forte.  This nice little barrel cactus almost looks like a bird's nest at first glance.

For hiking day number two, we headed to the Sangre de Cristo mountains for some "real" hiking.  There has been a lot of snow late in the season this year, so we know that we will not be able to summit any of the tall snow-covered peaks.  We decide to start at the Gibson trail head and venture up the Lake of the Clouds trail to see how far we can go before the snow drifts stop us.

It doesn't take long until we find the well-marked mountain trail disappearing into an sparsely traveled snow trail.

Since this is a "guy trip" we weren't about to let a little ice cold mountain stream stop our progress up the mountain.  (In all honesty, Denisa would have probably been leading the way across the log if she had been on the trip.)

The snow was deep and lightly packed, so we found ourselves "post holing"  for much of our hike.  If you haven't heard the term "post holing" lately, it simply means that your foot breaks through the snow and makes a deep hole that you must pull yourself out of to continue up the trail.

This hike is getting very tiring with the thick snow and the thin air.  We continue up the trail where the only other footsteps in the snow besides ours, are ones left by a bobcat or small mountain lion. When we come to a large canyon with a rushing stream and steep cliffs, we decide it is time to turn around and head back down the trail.  What a beautiful day and a great hike! We are definitely wandering His wonders today.

Even though we were tired when we returned to the cabin, what would a guy trip be without a little brotherly wrestling?

The moon was still shining brightly over the mountains as we left early the next morning for the long drive home.

We had a great trip! Thanks to Luke and Blake for all the memories and fun.

Finally... the end of my first and last blog.