Colorado and Back

Well, Jordan and I survived our first road trip together! We wanted to have one last hurrah here in the states before we move to Spain and thought we should visit our good friends Brian and Lori in Colorado! We were gone for a total of 9 days... it went by way too fast, we wished we could have spent more time in CO because we loved it there and wanted to spend more time with friends! The weather was awesome and we had a great time catching up with the Van Eps. Here are some pictures of our journey.

We stopped at the Grand Canyon on our way out and LOVED it. Neither of us had been there before! Breathtaking.

Instead of camping in a camp ground like normal people, we went out into the middle of nowhere in the National Forest right outside the canyon, as per the suggestion of a park ranger. It was a little scary waking up to the sound of coyotes in the middle of the night but we loved it!

A little view of our spot.

Breakfast. Can't beat toast made on a hanger and peanut butter spread by a plastic fork from Jack in the Box.

The next day we drove along more of the southeast rim of the canyon and caught some more sweet views!

There were lots of road construction stops along the 160 on our way over to Colorado Springs but we didn't mind because we had nice scenery!

Brian took us to Garden of the Gods our first day in Colorado Springs.

Brian, being Brian.

Red Rocks!

"The Balancing Rock"

We also got to go camping with Brian and Lori and two of their friends Matt and Eilene from Fort Collins. The place we wanted to camp at was up by a reservoir, so we had to park and hike up and in quite a ways... proved to be quite difficult with a tent, air mattress, food, clothes, chairs, altitude, etc! But we had an awesome time!

I still don't know how Brian carried all of that up the hill... he had about 100 lbs. in his pack!

We of course wanted to play games with Brian and Lori like old times so we took the dominos out for some Mexican train but the boys could not resist making towers and trying to knock them down before we got started...

Stay tuned for more adventures soon.... we fly out to Spain on Wednesday!