Weekend Recap, Vol. 7

Good morning, friends! Did you have a good weekend? We did a bit of good ‘ol Colorado exploring this weekend and I’m so excited to share our adventures with you here!!

Starting off the weekend right, Friday evening Allen and I went to see the movie Spectre with my friend Conor. It was definitely the classic James Bond movie with over-the-top action and ridiculously orchestrated love scenes, but it was a great way to entertain ourselves on a low-key Friday night. I’d reccomend it.

To make up for sleep lost over the week, we slept in on Saturday morning (no alarms ! yippee!). I got up around 9:30am and immediately turned on my favorite channel of the season (Hallmark, of course) and watched Christmas movie after Christmas movie while working on some exciting upcoming blog posts. It was just one of those mornings where all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and do absolutely nothing. Do you ever have those days?  Allen spent his morning reading in bed. So I think he was having a similar moment.

And while we really just wanted to stay in the horizontal position all day long ( I seriously could have), it was much too pretty outside not to get into nature if even for just a short while. So Saturday afternoon, we decided to go on a short hike to Mallory Cave in Boulder. And as you can see, it was indeed a gorgeous day in Boulder!

Most of the snow from last week’s wintery mix had melted, but I was a bit too excited to see that there was some left over on the shaded portions of the trail.

The Mallory Cave Trail starts at the junction of the Mesa and NCAR trails. It’s a fairly flat, short trail that is perfect for a quick weekend hike. And there are beautiful rock features throughout with tons of bouldering options if you are into that kind of thing. The trail actually ends with a 100 foot rock climb, but we opted to just do the walking portion of the trail on Saturday. (Mostly for my benefit, as Allen has done the vertical climb before.)

On our way back down the trail, we stopped at several of the bouldering sites to gawk at the impressive chalk lines of people with much greater skills than us. At one of the easier sites, Allen decided to give it a go.

Seeing animal life is one of my favorite parts of hiking. Lucky for me, we had the chance to see some deer near the end of the trail. This one was sporting a nice pair of antlers so we gave him some distance.

Hiking does wonders for working up an appetite, so we decided (admittedly not that far into the hike) to drive to Golden for our favorite burgers and shakes at Bob’s Atomic Burgers. And while Golden isn’t too far from Boulder, our willingness to drive 30-40 minutes for a burger should tell you just how good they are. Or maybe just how much we enjoy food? Jury’s still out on that one. 😉

On our way to eat at Bob’s Atomic, I spotted a house up on a hill that was completely decked out in Christmas lights. Naturally, I told Allen we just had to find it and see it up close. If you didn’t already know, Christmas is my favorite time of the year!!

Also, how cute is this street name?! Snowberry Court. I want to live on Snowberry Court!

After weaving our way through the neighborhood, we finally found the famed house and it did not disappoint. Impressive, no? No wonder we could see it all the way from the highway! It was gorgeous and made me all giddy for the coming Christmas season.

After a bit more driving, we made it to Bob’s Atomic where we devoured a hamburger and shake each. It’s just so good! And also, chocolate malts make me happy.

Allen has really been into building Legos recently. And not just the traditional Lego bricks, but the Lego Technics that you can build and program to move. In his spare time (while on the job hunt), he’s been teaching himself control algorithms and learning how to program the inverted pendulum problem. There just happened to be a Lego store within 10 minutes of Bob’s Atomic, so we drove out to the mall to take a look at the kits and things they had there. He’s been looking for a specific type of wheel to build/program a motorcycle next. I may just have to get him this set for Christmas.

After browsing the Lego store like little kids and touching/building everything we could get our hands onto, we drove back to Boulder. I met up with Conor to finish a project presentation on GPS multipath error that we are giving this week. As you can see, we work real hard when we are together. 😉 Here, Conor is trying to play a rift from one of the songs we had on as background music. He’s actually quite good at figuring out tunes on the fly.

We ended up working well into the night, but finally finished up our project after working on it for what seems like an eternity. Do you ever feel that way? It seems like some projects just go on and on if you work on them just a little each day, as opposed to doing it in one fail swoop. At any rate, we’ll be done with presenting it soon enough.

Sunday morning we slept in again. When you’re in grad school, taking advantage of sleep on the weekends is a necessity. After waking up around 10am, we grabbed some nice hot coffee and were off to explore Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park, both about an hour drive from Boulder. That’s the thing I love about Boulder. Everything is so accessible and easily perfmits a weekend getaway!

The views did not disappoint, even from a distance.

Once in the park, there were these really neat (very tall) trees. I couldn’t help but snap a few photos of them. How do they sustain the wind?! They look so fragile.

While in Rocky Mountain National Park, we decided to hike the Emerald Lake trail. We had no idea that the trails were all snowy. Somewhere between being in the mountains and over 10,000 feet we just didn’t get the memo, which made for a very slippery and interesting hike to say the least. (We both need to get these Yaktrax.) But the views and adventure getting to them were well worth it. It’s a 3.6 mile hike roundtrip, but took us a little longer with the snowy path. As you can see, it was quite the wintery wonderland.

Allen liked showing off his skills sliding down many of the trails. I’m not sure how he got to be so coordinated and controlled on ice. Maybe the fact that he’s from Alaska? 🙂

We stopped at the first lake for a quiet moment and some pictures. Beautiful, no?

Allen was really intrigued by the twisting roots and limbs of the trees. I love how he captured them here.

Onward and upward to Emerald Lake we continued.

The views, though right? I loved that the landscape throughout this trail was constantly changing–from wooded forests to open lakes to grand mountainscapes. Every way you looked was a new gorgeous view.

I loved being surrounded by the tall evergreens along the narrow trail. It made it seem as though we were isolated from the world and exploring this part for the first time. That’s something I love about Colorado. How it doesn’t take much to just get away from everything and back into nature.

After tediously hiking up some icy patches, we finally reached the Emerald Lake. It was quite windy (windy being an understatement) and cold, but the views here were stunning.

You can even see some skiiers if you look real closely in the picture below. Along the trail we saw a handful of people skinning up the mountain (props to them!). They must have been headed here.

Did I mention it was very windy? With the way the mountains were situated, they accelerated the winds in this area in particular. I’m pretty sure I could’ve taken flight had I tried.

After admiring the views a bit longer, we decided to turn around and head back to warm up our chilled hands and noses.

I just can’t get over these views. Colorado continues to inspire and amaze me.

After we made it back to the car, we devoured (and I mean devoured) the snacks we had brought along for the trip. We had definitely worked up an appetite along the trail.

On or way out of town, I couldn’t help but stop at this quaint little Christmas Shoppe. I mean, how adorable is this little bungalow? And it was chocked full of Christmas decor and holiday spirit. It was enough to make this Christmas girl overflow with glee.

After visiting Alaska this summer, I’ve developed a minor obsession with all things moose-related. Naturally, I found this stuffed animal to be too much to handle.

For dinner, we went to the cutest little family diner called Colorado Cherry Company. And let me tell you, if you are in the area…go! Their homemade pot pies and fruit pies are amazing.

The atmosphere inside is very down-to-earth and small-town family friendly. And it’s got a great view of the mountains to boot. We each ordered a homemade, flaky pot pie with herb roasted chicken and vegetables in a creamy broth. It was delicious and just what we needed after a long day’s hike. If you go, I’d definitely recommend splitting one though, because you’ll definitely want to save room for dessert. To satiate our sweet tooths, we each ordered a slice of homemade fruit pie. Allen tried the pear cranberry pie while I ordered the blackberry pie. They were so good!!! And we were definitely glad we saved room for them. I think next time we’ll just go down the line and order one of each flavor. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

After finishing up dinner, we headed back to Boulder–our hearts and tummy’s full from the day’s adventures. We came back to the apartment and watched a few episodes of Friends before calling it a night and heading to bed. Overall, the weekend was a great adventure and I was so pleased that we were able to do a bit more Colorado exploring before winter truly sets in (and ski season arrives!).

What about you? Did you do anything fun this past weekend? I’d love to know!

In case you are interested, here is my last weekend recap. As always, feel free to leave comments below! If you’re interested in getting posts sent straight to your inbox, subscribe in the sidebar with your email. Or follow along on Instagram, Facebook, or Bloglovin’.