A slice of heaven

This past weekend we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary (again!). Jen and Micah kept Roan for 4 days while we snuck away about 2 1/2 hours to Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Resort. Yessss!

Arwen had made all the arrangements (a gift in itself!). The whole drive out there was stunning. It's out near the Collegiate mountain range and has gorgeous 14ers towering over the place. When we drove up we weren't quite sure what to make of the resort though. The main desk was under construction so we had to check in down a dingy hallway in someone's cluttered office. When we drove up to our room, the place was completely deserted and it looked rather like a motel. You are only going to say nice things I reminded myself as we went into the room.

Then voila! The place was gorgeous inside. Totally remodeled, all new nice furniture, a super comfy bed and an incredible mountain view. We both looked at each other and grinned. "For a second I was worried!" Arwen confessed.

We wasted no time. We went down immediately to check out the hot springs. All weekend we made use of the two large pools they have, one really hot and one comfortable for swimming. The pools were next to a large creek and surrounded by mountains. The weather was perfect all weekend. They have a couple of amenities we weren't able to make use of. Normally they have 30 creekside springfed pools available, but the snowmelt was so large that they cold creek was overflowing the hot springs. They also have a little waterpark with a huge waterslide that looked like fun, but it doesn't open till Memorial weekend. Nonetheless, we had a great time.

Just being able to do ordinary things I never seem to make time for or have become logistically impossible. Like sleeping in. Or wearing jewelry. Or continuing on in the same train of thought uninterrupted. I felt so pampered!

Over the course of the weekend we spent a little time in the quaint towns nearby, had some good meals, got massages (!), saw a doolie get pulled out of a creek, and went rafting in the Arkansas River. That was a bit of an adventure. What was supposed to be a moderately exciting Class 3 trip was made a bit more thrilling by the high water. Further stacking the deck against us, the occupants of our boat were made up of us, a somewhat inexperienced guide, and a very inexperienced couple from out of town. She was pretty useless with a paddle and he kept breaking his camera out right before every big rapid. The biggest rapid we did was Seidel's suckhole. Before hitting it, the guides (there were two boats traveling together) got us all out of the boats to scout it out. The high water made the large sinkhole feature of the rapid particularly challenging. They came up with what they thought was a good plan for getting through it in tact.

Instead, we managed to capsize the boat right as we entered the rapid. Which meant we went down the rest of it - including the sinkhole - outside the boat. It was a little sketchy. It's never a good feeling when you try to come up for air and get denied. By the time I saw the sky again I was panting hard. The entire trip up to this point I had really been hoping I wouldn't end up in the water because it was FREEZING cold. But what I found out is that a situation like that is so freaky that you get this huge rush of adrenaline, and you're so focused on not drowning that you don't even notice the water's temperature. Excellent!

To give you more of a feel for what we experienced, check out this video on YouTube of Seidel's Suckhole. No, none of these are our actual boat, but it gives you a good idea.

Our last night of the trip we camped out creekside. We had no reservations and showed up late, yet we still had our pick of creekside spots. It is wild to me that virtually any run of the mill place you go in Colorado to be out in nature, the setting is more spectacular than most anything I've seen outside the state. Except maybe Utah. And Maine. The point is Anywhere, CO inevitably ends up on my short list of Most Beautiful Places I've Been.

And in other news, here's a quick video of Roan from this morning. Wednesdays are our day together, and I like to let her sleep in, pick out whatever crazy clothes she wants to wear, and not fuss over her hair too much. It is also my day for running errands. We were getting ready to go to the grocery store and she insisted she needed her purse, two necklaces, and her valentine's day pink sparkly heart glasses.

Click here to see it