I stole this off of facebook this morning. And I decided to stop cleaning my house and blog a little. It's been a while. I want to share some of what I've been doing while not blogging the last couple of weeks.  Not house cleaning either. Or even gardening much.

Some friends from school and I took a trip out to Colorado! My sister has a lovely house in Edwards, which is close to everything we want to do, so we stayed there and had a blast doing everything we wanted to do.

Carrie, who is not afraid to leave her house to travel and does so very frequently, was going to be gone a lot again this summer (this is usual) and felt guilty about leaving 14 year old Mary Kate at home to go off with us. So I suggested that we take our would be left behind daughters. Mine would be Alina, since Kalyn will be going to Peru with us later. Shirley was going to bring her daughter also, but she had finals to take. And Tina is foot loose and fancy free, and even took off right after we got home for another vacation to Chicago.

I am so glad I got to take Alina! I had a really good time with her.

Carrie loves to stop along the way, so we took some side trips in Kansas on our way out. This is the very charming town of Lindsborg, a Swedish town in the Smokey Hills. I found out later that my cousin Tim owns an antique store there and we probably visited his shop that morning, but I had no idea at the time. We will have to make a trip back sometime.

We also drove way out on some dirt roads to visit the smallest state park in Kansas, Mushroom Rock State Park. This is a panoramic Tina took with her fancy iphone of the scenery there.

 And here I am in front of the State park sign. Yes, I like to travel in dresses. So what? Did I mention that it's the smallest state park in the state of Kansas? Something had to make it worth driving to.

 

And here are the girls underneath the big mushroom rock. Yes, they are there. See the tiny speck of pink? That's my pretty girl.

And here she is looking much more mighty.

Finally, we stopped to have lunch in the town of Lucas, a very quirky Kansas town. They pride themselves for their grassroots artists, and have a museum dedicated to them. We didn't get to visit it, or tour the other oddities of the town that are pretty interesting. But we did get to use the grassroots artists public restroom in town. Which, in itself, was worth stopping in town for.

A giant roll of toilet paper marks the public restrooms on the plaza.

The bathrooms are covered in beautiful and quirky mosaics. Just lovely.

We did also stop to take our picture in front of the Garden of Eden. Most of us had been before and we did not have time to take the tour. Or to visit with the lady next door who owns the world's largest collection of the world's smallest replicas of the world's largest things. Maybe next time.

Instead we hurried on through western Kansas and into Colorado, stopping briefly for pizza in Idaho Springs, to get to Susan's house in the mountains before midnight.

So we could all be up and raring to go the next morning at 5:30 to rent bikes in Frisco to ride back into town from the Vail Pass. A 14 mile downhill ride through quaint mountain towns beside babbling brooks and towering cliffs. It was glorious. I was so happy to be doing this with my daughter.

We tried to ride on to Breckenridge, we were so enthused, but it started storming (and the ride was no longer all downhill) so we back tracked a little to Frisco, turned in our bikes and shopped the rest of the day.

The next day was hiking. There was a highly recommended hike to Hanging Lake in Glenwood Springs that I thought sounded good, then I thought maybe we would soak in the hot springs in town. Carrie and I even watched "When Vacations Attack" on tv that morning and laughed about being prepared for our hike because we had seen the terrible things that could happen.

Pffft. We're teachers. Of course we are prepared.

Look at us! We're ready.

Do be careful on those rocks, girls. It's pretty rough.

Aannnd, we learned that we could have been more prepared. For example, somebody, one of us, could have brought a FIRST AID KIT!

Mary Kate fell on a sharp rock, gashed her leg open and, long story short......required 7 stitches. We spent some time in the ER. And no hot springs or river water for her.

No worries, though. Glenwood Springs offers an adventure park on top of a cliff. You take a gondola to the top and can tour caves and there are rides offered as well.

We didn't do this.

We did do the cave tours. And we were rewarded with this view from a balcony in one of the caves.

 That is the Colorado River down there. And the next day we would raft that stretch and wave at the people on the cave balcony!

 After this slightly more intense part of our rafting journey. I always love rafting trips! It was simply fabulous to have Alina with me on this one! Can't see her back there, but she was paddling away!

Of course, Mary Kate and Carrie had to stay behind on this one. Earlier that day we drove to Redstone, which Mary Kate's hospital doctor recommended as a scenic tour. It was beautiful! That area is known for it's marble. The marble for the tomb of the unknown soldier was quarried there.

We did a little shopping and sight seeing. Alina took my camera and took a zillion pictures (300 at least).

This is a marble sculpture, one of many decorating this town.

And of course, the town is very cute and everyone takes pride in it's cuteness and have the most beautiful flowers planted in front of their establishments or homes. This is what most of the hundreds of pictures Alina took look like. One is my screensaver currently. I told her she's lucky to live in the digital age because when I was her age we used something called "film" in our cameras. And I would have like 12 or maybe 24 pictures I could take, max! So I had to be much more thoughtful about the things I chose to waste the film on.

She took a little time out to play in the creek.

And after rafting, when we walked back up town to eat dinner, she was at it again. Shooting her surroundings. These are big metal flowers decorating the street.

 And other art. Look at that flower garden above the restaurant! I missed that.

And of course we got to cook dinner at Susan's house and relax in the hot tub. On the last night Alina even asked me if we could soak in the hot tub alone, just the two of us before we packed to leave. Ahh, how nice!

One more thing. Look how nicely Carrie does hair. Why can't I do that?