Riley & Avery Pope

Today started with Missy & I taking a hike to Lake Ptarmigan, 3 miles one way with an elevation gain of about 1,800…of course all uphill. Twice we had to cross over snow. Up at the lake we saw a lot of trees down. During the winter some pretty big avalanches came through and took [...]

Today we went to the Sand Dunes National Park. The dunes cover 30 square miles and reach heights up to 700 feet tall. They are the tallest dunes in North America. To quote Missy, “that’s a lot of sand!”. When you arrive at the dunes you have to cross a small stream. Which is very [...]

Today Missy and I did a zipline tour. We went on 5 different cables, that ranged in length from 185 feet to 400 feet long and 135 feet above the canyon floor. On the last line  you hit speeds around 45 mph.
The tour took a couple hours. After we signed the death waiver, we were [...]

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Today the 3 of us drove up to the top of Cottonwood pass. Riley has now been to over 12,000 feet. From town to the top of the pass the temperature dropped over 20 degrees. After going over the pass we stopped at Taylor [...]

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Missy & I did a hike today, we went up Monarch Pass, (Pat was watching Riley). We started on a dirt road and then found one of the green trails at the ski area. We took that all the way to the top. They [...]

After seeing the snow we headed down the mountain and had a lesson of what happens to snow in the summer. We did a little off-roading in Pat’s Jeep to get close to the waterfall…then it started raining, so we had lunch in the car. Once the rain left up we did a short hike [...]

Yes, that’s snow in that picture. We went to the top of the Continental Divide - 11,312 feet. We found a lot of patches of snow. As you can see Riley was all smiles, she’s going to be a skier for sure.

We made it to Colorado! We left Friday night and drove to Indy. We stayed at a Hyatt Place (nice hotel by the way). Riley was able to relax in a king size bed. Saturday morning we headed to the airport. We had 2 flights, Indy to Minneapolis and Minneapolis to Colorado Springs. Riley slept [...]