2020 Road Trip: Vail

We left Moab Saturday morning pretty early and took the scenic route through the La Sal Mountains and up 128. It was a beautiful drive!

Castle Rock from the mountain drive. 

Castle Rock up close. 

We drove around 5 hours to get to Vail, Colorado where we met up with Josh's parents and his cousin Meranda. 

Gore Creek ran right by their condo. We stayed a little further away.

Exploring Vail Village.

Everybody but Barry. 

Couldn't pass up ice cream!

















We took a little walk between Vail Village and Lionshead.







The next morning we went for a hike along Gore Creek.

In the afternoon we headed to Edwards to hike the Berry Creek Trail. It was rated as easy on Alltrails but we begged to differ. Lots of elevation gain and the hike back down was pretty treacherous! It had beautiful views though so I thought it was worth it. 

Finally found a sign marking the trail!









We were supposed to go to an outdoor church after our hike but that didn't work out-we couldn't find it! But we did have a nice picnic dinner before heading back to Vail.

That evening the Smith family joined us in Vail. The kids were beyond excited to be on vacation with their cousins!

Monday morning we went for a walk on the Ten Mile Recreation Path (most people bike it). It was a pretty easy hike, lots uphill in the beginning.

I love wildflowers.

The youngers lounging.

Playing by the creek.

Chad and the kids in the freezing cold creek.









The kids used an old pool float to ride down the "rapids" until they popped it.

Ike after we wiped out.

Ike got stung by a wasp on his lip. Poor fella!

Cousins chilling in the hot tub.















Tuesday morning Josh, Brit, Chad and I took the older kids plus Zac for a hike to see some waterfalls along Gore Creek. We had to hike up into the mountains and it was a great hike!

Ready to roll.

Made it to the creek finally! The water was freezing. It made my feet numb just wading in it for a minute.

Chad and I went down with the kids to where we could get into the creek while Brit and Josh hiked up a little further. Turned out they found a much easier spot to play in. Ha! So we moved up to that area.

It was so pretty and peaceful. Video of the water roaring.

These kids are so cute!

Ike and Brooke went with Josh's parents to the Betty Ford Botanical Garden.













That afternoon we went to Georgetown to ride on an old steam train.

It was so neat driving through the mountains.

Brook and Grandma.

Wednesday morning our family headed back home. The others stayed on to finish out their vacations.

When we were packing up a hummingbird got stuck in our van! It was so hard to get that fella out.

Stayed with Joe and Claudia again. Here's Ike with one of their puppies. He really loves those dogs!













Thursday around dinner time we made it home! We logged over 3500 miles driving on this trip-good thing we love road trips. The kids watched so many movies and Josh and I listened to several really good podcasts (Bear Brook, 1619, and a couple good episodes of Criminal).  Even though we didn't get to go on our original trip (Canadian Rockies, Glacier National Park), we had a blast and the kids really seemed to enjoy everything we did. Here's to the next Bowyer Road Trip!