Free Ballin' At Treeline

A lot has happened in the past few days. Last week on Thursday I had a job interview in Longmont that went really well. Drew and I celebrated by going to Ft Collins and doing the New Belgium Brewery tour. The tour was booked solid for three weeks but Drew weaseled us in by agreeing to participate in a “slowest bike race” in the parking lot. Of course he made me participate too. He won and I lost, but who wants to win at being slow anyway? The tour was awesome- we got lots of free beer including a glass of Fat Tire twenty minutes off the line. It had so much more flavor than bottled Fat Tire that you buy at the store. All the people at New Belgium were really cool; in fact the employees seemed a little too happy. It was like Disney for adults, complete with a slide and goofy costumes to dress up in.

The next day Drew and I went back to Rocky Mountain National Park for our first overnight hike. The park is very busy in the summertime so we didn’t get the campsite on the lake we wanted. Instead we were assigned a spot in a mountain meadow about 2 miles from Lawn Lake. The hike to the campsite was about 6 miles with 2,000 ft of elevation gain. The campsite ended up being in a really pretty spot and we got there just in time before the afternoon storm rolled in. We quickly set up camp and got attacked by swarms of mosquitoes. Who knew how much Florida and Colorado have in common- afternoon storms, mosquitoes, crazy drivers… Anyway after the storm passed we hiked another two miles to get to the lake. I have to say, this was the most beautiful, pristine lake I’ve ever seen.

On the other side of the lake the land formed a “saddle” between two 13,000 ft mountains. Drew looked up and said “We’re going to hike up there tomorrow morning.” I said “what’s this ‘we’ sh*t?” But sure enough the next morning I found myself headed toward the saddle. To reach the top we had to gain another 2,000 feet, but this time it was in only a mile and a half. It was like using a stair-stepper for two hours at altitude. It took us up above treeline, past another alpine lake, up to where we could see into the next valley. We took a bunch of pictures, patted ourselves on the back, tried not to vomit from exertion, and headed back down. It took only half the time to get back to the trailhead but twice as much pain from going downhill. By the end of the second day we were sore all over and ready to be done. When we got back to the car and headed toward civilization I got an e-mail on my phone from the doctor I interviewed with a couple days ago- he offered me the job! Drew and I immediately went to a pizza joint in Estes Park and binged on pizza and beer to celebrate our two victories- overnight hike and employment.

(as you can see from this picture Drew likes to hike in cute little running shorts without undies- hence the blog title)

Today we left the front range to spend the night in Vail. Drew has an old friend from high school that lives here that we wanted to see and I wanted to check out the town. Tomorrow we’ll drive south through the Rockies to Durango, CO where I have another interview this week. I’m waiting to see what happens with this job opportunity before I decide on the other. We’re so thankful that God has provided for us and indulged our dreams of living out west.

Drew’s fun fact: If you could throw a snowball fast enough, it would totally vaporize when it hit a brick wall