Celebrating our 39th Anniversary at Blue Lakes!

We get to do so many special things on a daily basis, that we really have a hard time planning something special for a really special day like a wedding anniversary. So this year we decided to re-hike one of our favorite hikes of all time. We have never repeated a hike before, but the Blue Lakes are so beautiful that we wanted to do it again. 

It just happened that the best day to make the hike was on our 39th anniversary. 

So we celebrated like everyone does, by setting the alarm for 5 a.m. and eating a breakfast of milk and dry cereal while we drove to the trail head in the dark. We found two different herds of elk on that dark highway drive, so God was taking care of us on our anniversary that we managed not to hit any of them.

We are up so early because the small trail head fills up early because this is a very popular hike. We aren't the only ones wanting a repeat look at the Blue Lakes. But we probably are the only ones celebrating a 39th anniversary on this trail today. We noticed that all of the hikers we saw this morning were in their twenties, so we're sure they haven't been married 39 years. It was still a little dark in the forest where we were walking when the first light of the morning was hitting the top of the mountains.

After a couple hours of walking in the forest, we came out into a valley ringed with beautiful mountain peaks. We have obviously wandered into more of God's wonders on this anniversary!

We probably would have gotten to that mountain vista a little earlier, but Denisa discovered that the raspberries are ripening on the trail. She loves fresh berry trail snacks--especially on her anniversary!

We also would have been faster if it weren't for all the time we spent watching the "marmot village." We've never seen so many of these very social creatures in one place. At one point, we could see seven marmots at the same time.

Normally they are happy to sit on a rock, and watch the passing hikers.

Every time we took a picture, it seemed we had two or more in the frame because they seem to like to hang out together.

But for the first time, we saw controversy in the marmot world. We had never seen a marmot fight before today.

Just a little further down the trail, and we got our first views of the first of the blue lakes. The emerald water is something that we hadn't forgotten since the first time we saw it five years ago. But when we compare the pictures from last time, we see some differences. In August 2015, there was more snow on the mountains behind the lake, and the meadows were filled with wildflowers. So 2020 not only brought us Covid, but it also brought us a Colorado drought and its side effects.

We continued the hike up and onto the next ridge, to get the overhead view of that emerald lake now below us.

Then we hiked on to the next valley for a look at the second of the blue lakes with its rocky ridge line. Again, we're missing the wildflowers we marveled at in 2015.

Most people stop with the first or second lake, but we had to continue to the third blue lake of the day.

The trip to all three Blue Lakes and back is 10.3 miles long, with 2,595 feet in elevation gain, and took us about 6.5 hours of hiking. So of course we took more pictures than that. In fact, we took way too many pictures. We like keeping the pictures in the blog as a fun reminder for ourselves of God's magnificent wonders we got to wander on our anniversary. 

While we scroll through some of the pictures from today, we thought we would scroll through some anniversary memories from past years.

First anniversary - We were living in a one-bedroom efficiency apartment and starting our senior year of college. We estimate it was about the same square footage as our motor home is now. We celebrated by defrosting the top layer of our wedding cake, that had been taking up too much room in our tiny freezer for a year. Mark will eat anything, but even he had a hard time eating that dried out wedding cake.

5th anniversary - Mark had fallen in love with a brand new Buick LeSabre on the local car dealer's lot. Denisa thought it was too extravagant and too expensive, but figured we'd be buying it eventually. So she bought the car herself, put a big red bow on it, and picked Mark up for lunch in the new Buick on our anniversary. He was really surprised!

7th anniversary - Our first baby was less than one month old, and we dared to take him with us to our favorite pizza place for our first meal out as parents. He woke up and started crying about the time the pizza arrived. So we boxed it up and took it home to eat cold pizza for our anniversary.

10th anniversary - Mark and his brothers were going on a trip to the Colorado mountains, and taking the horses and pack mule. Mark let his brother pick the date, and they left on the trip on our tenth anniversary. So Denisa was at home alone with our 3-year-old and 4-month-old to celebrate this momentous occasion. To make up for his absence, Mark bought her an aluminum frying pan (because the tenth is the aluminum anniversary)--and a string of pearls.

15th anniversary - While raising kids, our anniversaries seem to be a blur. But Denisa planned this one to re-enact our first date. She got barbecued ribs from one restaurant in town, and onion rings from another, plus she made Texas toast and apricot preserves to complete the same meal we ate on our first date. Then she ordered the movie we watched at the twin theater that first date night. The name of the movie we watched was, "The Promise" (even though Mark still says he wanted to go to "The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again" that was playing at the other theater.)

Those are some good memories of some of the early years of our marriage. It's hard to believe that some of those memories are from so long ago! Our 39-year marriage has truly been blessed in so many ways. We did find a few wildflowers on the mountain-side this trip, so we had to snap a picture of them. Denisa is a lucky woman, because she has a husband that treats her to beautiful views and a bouquet of flowers on her anniversary!