In The Mountains

Last weekend we took a mini vacation up to the mountains. Crested Butte is a little ski town, that has some amazing wildflowers in the summer. In fact they even have a wildflower festival every year. I wanted to go and take some pictures and the kids wanted to go swim in the pool and ride the free bus (which we actually didn't do this time).

Can you find our condo?? =)

I think we got there a little too late to see the wildflowers in all their glory, but there were still a lot of pretty flowers. Like these:

And these:

And these:

We saw plenty of John's favorite flower. The columbine.

You can't beat the scenery here.

We stopped at a little stream so the kids could play. The water was COLD, but the kids still played in it. Not all of them enjoyed it though...

Water, rocks, and sticks. What more could a boy ask for?

And the biggest boy, had to throw the biggest rock in the water. I love this picture. I love how Big Sis is posing (without any instruction from me), and I love the look on her face as she is watching her Dad.

Um, yeah. I do not know what Big Sis is doing in this picture. She must have been bunny hopping or something.

The kids spent a lot of time in the pool.

One of the days we hiked up to some water falls. It was only a 2 mile hike round trip, but it took us 2 hours with all the kids. I was proud of them for making it though because some of it got hard for them.

This was as close as we could get to the falls. I don't know if a 2 hour hike was worth it! =)

Our first morning there we woke up to this in the parking lot right outside our condo.

Those are bear tracks leading from the garbage cans down the parking lot. We all thought it was pretty cool and wanted the bear to come back (we even contemplated leaving food out to entice him). Our last morning there at 6:30 we heard a really loud noise outside and went out on the balcony to find this:

He didn't find much in those recycle bins, but I bet he is glad that we are doing our best to save the Earth.

And, one of my favorite shots from the trip:

I love rainbows, and I love vacations (no matter how short), and I love relaxing in the mountains. The kids start school this week, so now it is back to real life!