A little place called Aspen

Lloyd: We gotta get out of this town!
Harry: Oh yeah, and go where? Where are we gonna go?
Lloyd: I'll tell you where. Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen.

 

Scott and I celebrated our 6th anniversary this weekend with a quick trip to Aspen.

It's a 3 1/2 hour drive from Colorado Springs up into the mountains to Aspen and a really beautiful drive.  I took way too many pictures, just of the drive!  In the upper left is Mt. Elbert, the tallest peak in Colorado.

Here we are at Independence Pass.  It was cold up there!

Coming down into Aspen.  It's stupid to say, but there must be millions of aspen trees there.  Most of them had already lost their leaves, but they were still pretty and plenty of other fall colors to see.  Matthew shows his Oregon roots by hugging a tree.  ;)

First stop in Aspen: The John Denver Sanctuary.

I'm a big John Denver fan so I enjoyed visiting this sanctuary to him and his music.  It was a very peaceful space - a really beautiful sanctuary right along the Roaring Fork River.  There were big rocks with lyrics to some of his songs etched into the rock.  Anna and I posed by Annie's Song.

Still at the sanctuary.  The kids loved climbing around on the rocks and wanted to dip into the river for fallen leaves.

Anna loved collecting leaves, sticks and rocks (so did Matthew).  Our little collectors.

 

 We stayed at The Gant in Aspen and it was so nice.  We even got upgraded to a larger suite just because it was available.  Hooray for the off-season!  I took a few pictures in the condo, but they didn't turn out too well.  :(  I really liked our aspen tree view!

 We went to see the Maroon Bells near Aspen.  I'd never heard of them before this trip but supposedly they are the most photographed mountain peaks in North America.  Do they look familiar?  They were amazingly beautiful.  Don't judge them by my bad pictures.

The kids found a couple of sticks while we were there and decided to drag them around everywhere.  They left a trail in case we got lost.  :)

There was a very grim warning to hikers about hiking/climbing the Bells.  I never intended to hike them, but now I really don't.  We had fun just looking at them. 

Here we are by the White River (I think) near the Bells.  So pretty!

We toured around the town of Aspen a little bit.  It was very sleepy.  Summer is over and it's not ski season yet.  I was fine with that.

Scott and I thought this was the creepiest cemetery ever.  Old Ute Cemetery in Aspen (The city of Aspen used to be called "Ute" when it was founded back in the 1800s).  It's very old (with creepy old headstones) and has a list of the civil war veterans that are buried there.  The cemetery now is completely overgrown with aspen trees.  You can see the white grave markers  sticking up among the trees.  I don't want to go in there at night.

Our last day there we did a little night swimming.  It wasn't too cold (60s) but after getting out of the warm water it felt pretty chilly.  I like Matthew's "I'm so cold" face.

So our trip to Aspen was beautiful and relaxing.  The way vacations should be.  Anna and Matthew both cried when they found out we were going back to Colorado Springs and they couldn't stay in the hotel anymore.  :)  Grant on the other hand seemed much happier once we were back at home.  Aspen is as beautiful as we'd heard and we'd love to go back again sometime and see the silver mines, ski, see the aspen trees in full yellow fall color...but I don't know if we'll get a chance to do any of that.  There are so many other Colorado places we'd like to see.  Thank you Aspen!!  That John Denver really knows what he's talking about!