In the last month, I've been averaging around 60 hours a week billable time, which doesn't include travel time (another 8 - 10 hours / week). I've just been worn thin for the last several months, so I'll take any day off that I can get. So for Labor Day, we got up and headed down to Boulder to do some hiking.
We got a decent start to the day, but the masses had already beaten us to the trailhead. We planned on starting at Chatauqua Park, but as we drove up to the parking lot we quickly decided against that. An enormous, unbroken stream of people moving up towards the Flat Irons could be seen from the parking lot, and that was more than we needed to see. We'd look elsewhere....
Our idea was a popular idea
We headed south to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) to find less crowds. While there were still quite a few people at the NCAR, the crowds were much less. We hopped out and headed to the trail. The winds were howling a bit (more on that later), but we were hoping as we got closer to the mountains that we could find some relief from the winds. We started down the Mesa Trail, which runs for many miles. We didn't have any good options for loops, so we just decided we'd do an out and back.
Cooper was doing well navigating the trails, but the Mesa Trail was quite rocky and more difficult for him to navigate than our usual route at Heil Ranch. He had a couple spills, but bounced back up and kept going. He was having a big time jumping off every rock he could find. After a couple of spills, I convinced him to hold my hand to help keep him upright and off we went, bouncing off everything in site much like Tigger.
We hiked out a bit over a mile, then decided it was time to run around and go in search of some lunch. As we hiked back out, Jill was up ahead of Cooper and I (we were jumping off rocks). She got to the top of a climb, turned and looked back to see where Cooper and I were and started pointing back to the NW. When I turned I was shocked to see huge plums of smoke were emerging over the Flat Irons. The fire had to have just started as there were no signs of smoke on our way out, but as we made our way back the smoke started quickly filling the sky.
From our vantage point, it looked like the fire was up Flagstaff. We later learned it was up 4 Mile Canyon, an area where we've looked at a number of houses. The smoke was quickly covering Boulder, making for strange views as one half of the sky was a brilliant blue and the other half was covered in thick white smoke.
We stopped and posed with some of the last signs of Summer on our way out too...
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