Ever since we moved here, I wanted to go to Golden Gate Canyon State Park. It's not very far - just a little northwest of Golden, Colorado. I'd heard it was very beautiful being up in the mountains, but with it being so close to Denver, it is usually packed during the summer. Surprisingly, I was able to find an available camping spot on a Thursday, so we set off on another hiking and camping expedition.
The park certainly lived up to its reputation. We were surrounded by pine trees and some incredible Precambrian rock formations (about 600 million years old). There was a trail that ran right past our campsite. It was a little steep in places, but only 3 miles long. I haven't done much hiking this summer, so I was a little sore afterwards (the muscles for biking are definitely different than those you use for hiking, especially up and down hills).
The bad thing about Colorado is that it rains almost every afternoon. Luckily, I brought our screened-in dining tent this time, so we were able to sit outside in chairs while it was raining. It never rains that long, so after about 20 minutes the sun came back out and we started cooking dinner. This time I made chicken fajita foil packets... they turned out really tasty.
At night we used our camp cots for the first time. It was a significant improvement over sleeping on the ground. Unfortunately, every time Bruce got up to go to the bathroom, Charlie jumped into his cot. I don't think Charlie liked sleeping on the floor of the tent.
Charlie still goes to doggie day care every Wednesday. He really enjoys playing with his "friends," but he also gets very excited when they call his name to go home. Lucky for us, he comes home exhausted.
I am continuing to check off bike rides on my bucket list. I started a new watercolor journal to record all my summer activities. This past week, I ate breakfast at the B&B Cafe before riding the Plum Creek Trail in Castle Rock. Too bad I wasn't there later in the day, because I could have tried their homemade pie, but it's been way too hot around here to ride in the afternoon. That blue thing in the middle of the picture is the vacuum at the car wash next to the Black Rock Coffee Shop. I've always wanted to sketch it - it's such a complicated-looking piece of equipment. The cage on the right is one of the "holes" at the frisbee golf course. I don't play frisbee golf, but the course is at the same spot that I park my car when I ride the Cherry Creek Trail.
We did a little more yard work this week - spread 4-1/2 tons of gravel. Like I said, we don't often get much accumulation of rain, but every so often we get a gulley washer, which means all of our mulch ends up in the street. We finally got fed up with sweeping it back into the yard and decided to replace it with decorative rock.
We've still got some islands of mulch in the yard, but all the sloped sections are now covered in rock. It took us (mostly Bruce) almost the entire day to spread it. And then, of course, we got our 20 minutes of rain, which was good, because it washed off all the dust so you can see the pink and gray tones of the granite.
Normally this time of year, I go to Chicago for their urban sketching workshop. But this year I skipped the summer workshop and went to the spring one back in May. Courtney still went. She was actually in charge of the hospitality committee, but managed to take a couple workshops and do a couple sketchwalks.
Amber sent me a picture of Brian. The pillow is his "protection" from his cats. They like to jump on his lap and dig around trying to find a comfortable spot. Lucky for us that Charlie is not a lap dog.
