#monarch pass

Monarch Pass sure is pretty 😍

Monarch Pass, Colorado- This was my drive in my first year of college (University for the non-U.S.) Beautiful? Yes. Terrifying in my college car, which was an '81 AMC Eagle? Also yes. One of the major reasons I transferred to a Front Range school. The other reason is because I'm just not a small-mountain-town girl. I'm a front-range-city-visit-small-mountain-towns, girl.

I have been flying solo for a couple of days, while Doug and Bob are backpacking.  Our son, Dan, and his dog, Willow, are joining me today.  I am suppose to meet up with Dan on the road to Mt. Princeton early this afternoon.  We are dropping our truck off at the Chalk Cliffs Trailhead, where we hope to exit on Sunday from our backpacking trip on Segment 14 of the Colorado Trail.

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise on Thursday morning at Monarch Park Campground.  After a leisurely breakfast to ease into my day, I decided to drive up to the top of Monarch Pass and take a little hike along the Monarch Crest Trail.  I needed to make contact with Dan to firm up our meeting time and I knew that I could get cell service on top of the trail.

Beautiful day on Monarch Crest Trail.

Firecracker penstemon.

After an uneventful couple of evenings on my own, I woke up Friday morning excited to meet up with Dan and Willow.  I headed in to Salida to do a little shopping and to get gas in the truck.  After finishing my errands, I headed toward Buena Vista to meet up with Dan on the road to Mt. Princeton.  We timed our meeting perfectly, arriving within 5 minutes of each other.  We dropped our truck off and headed back to Monarch Park campground for the evening.  After an early dinner, we took a little drive up the old Monarch Pass road.

It was a gorgeous summer evening in the Colorado Rockies!

Our son, Dan, and his new pup, Uno, came up for an unexpected visit this weekend (since we had an extra camping spot for them, since our friends couldn’t make it).  We decided to take a hike up to Waterdog Lakes, the trailhead is just across the road from our campground.  This would be Uno’s first hike, so we were curious how she would do.

Uno was very enthusiastic and she was great about staying close to Dan.  The trail got a bit steep as we approached the lake, so she was happy to see that water!

Uno played in the water, while we took a few pictures.

Waterdog Lakes - we think there is another lake just a little bit higher up, but we didn’t go any further than this lake.  We thought that was a big enough hike for Uno.

Uno, hanging with her dad.

Happy dog!

Photo op!