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!