White Ranch hike on Christmas Eve

I love love love these two!

An enormous, blessed benefit to living in Colorado is pictured here!

Joshua and Erica live here, and Thalia comes here to visit from Florida.

 We met at White Ranch, close to Golden, CO, for a hike.

 Larry, Brenda, Eli, Lissette, Brian, Thomas, Joshua and Thalia all got there before Ron and I...so they took off on the trail.

 Lissette fell on an icy patch so they were on their way back to the car when we arrived.  

Larry and Eli stayed...while Brenda, Lissette, Brian and Thomas went home.

We took off...for Joshua, Thalia, Larry and Eli, they took off again!

See Joshua and Baxter up ahead?

 Thalia was going for it...

uphill for the 2nd time.

It was probably a bit tough seeing as she lives at sea level in Florida and this was at about 7,000 feet!

 There were beautiful homes around the trails.

 When we stopped to take some pictures, Ron was advised by his granddaughter and son to remove the orange vest!

 Come on, Thalia!

 Not too long after this, Joshua noticed Thalia was a bit pale...

Altitude...

so they headed back.

Ron, Larry, Eli, Baxter and I continued on for awhile.

 Eli is 8 years old...and he's quite the hiker.

He must get it from his grandpa (Larry) and his mom!

We had been climbing...and climbing...and he suggested we stop for a "little break."

 These pictures were taken from there.

 Brothers!

 I told Eli to go stand by his grandpa!

Knowing I had food to make for tomorrow's Christmas dinner, we headed downhill from here.  This ended up as a 3.5 mile hike for Ron and I.  

Another great hike in Colorado!

An added benefit to living in Colorado

 December 23rd, we headed to Arvada.

Our niece, Brenda, lives there with her family.  Her dad, Ron's brother, was there with my sister-in-law, Sandra.  We visited awhile, took a hike on the trails behind Brenda's house, and stayed for dinner.

Ron had Baxter and Larry had Bailey.

Being able to see Larry and Sandra is another great benefit to living in Colorado.

Ron and Larry have been able to see each other 4 times since June!

Hiking Mt Falcon

 December 15th, we took Baxter and went to Mt Falcon to hike.

Mt Falcon is a large park...we had hiked this section with Larry, Brenda, and Brenda's kids back in June.

 We started on the Castle Trail.

 The Castle Trail is long...we haven't hiked the full trail.  There is another entrance to it closer to Red Rocks.  That section of the trail is MUCH steeper.  

 Can you see why it's called the Castle Trail?

 We passed the junction with the Meadow Trail...but kept on the Castle Trail.

 It had probably been 3+ weeks since it had snowed, but there were still patches in the shady areas.

 I was trying to take a picture of the snow covered mountains in the distance...which is Rocky Mountain National Park.  My camera wasn't picking it up, though.

 Do you see Red Rocks Amphitheater?

 Ah-ha!  Here you can sort of see it...but it was brilliant!

 After awhile, we turned around and returned to the junction with the Meadow Trail.  

 We had been on the Meadow Trail awhile...and we saw a sign for the Parmalee Trail.

 We had hiked a good 2 miles.  I remember seeing a sign for the Parmalee Trail when we first started hiking.  Ron thought it might be a shortcut to get back to the car.

 We were going to a Christmas dinner that night, so we took the 'shortcut'.

 It was beautiful!

 After being on it awhile, we realized it wasn't as well traveled as some of the other trails.

 See the highway in the distance?

 It was also a lot rockier...

 The vistas were spectacular.

3 miles later, we came to the end of the Parmalee Trail...and were close to the parking lot.

We ended up with a 5 mile hike this day, but it was worth it!