I went on another outing with the biking club. This time we were going to ride downtown, have a late breakfast, and ride back. Since the temperatures were supposed to be in the high 90's, and the group wasn't leaving until 9am, I decided to drive downtown at 7am and do the bike ride backwards. I took along my sketchbook, because I thought I'd have enough time to do a little painting while I waited for the others to catch up (they were starting from the clubhouse). But along the way, I got confused by all the spurs going off the trail and ended up in Cherry Creek Park instead of Village Greens Park.
I finally caught up to the others just a couple miles from the restaurant, but I was exhausted from biking 20 miles (round trip) in 3 hours.
A couple days later, Bruce and I went on a hike with the hiking club to Castlewood Canyon State Park. Cherry Creek also runs through this park. Back in 1890, this park was actually a reservoir, but in 1933, the dam broke and flooded Denver. They rebuilt the dam closer to downtown Denver to form the reservoir in Cherry Creek Park, but they left this part of the wall up from the old dam. Part of our hike went down through that canyon.
It was a nice hike with stunning views, but grueling - lots of scrambling over boulders. Our group leader thought this was an "easy" hike. We started out with 11 people, but only 6 of us made it the entire 6.2 miles (and I was dragging by the end). Guess I need to get in better shape.
