Mountain time fun

This past weekend I went on a women's retreat with our church. It was in the most beautiful setting of Buena Vista, CO (about a 2 hour drive west of Colorado Springs). We stayed at the Trail West Lodge and had a great time learning about what it looks like to be living in response to God loving us. We heard the question asked a lot, "Are you Living Loved?" I'll have to write another post about the retreat because there is so much I can say. It was a weekend of refreshment, growing, sharing with others, and fun. These pictures are from the weekend in Buena Vista and at the Mount Princeton Hot Springs in Nathrop, CO. If you google "Mount Princeton Hot Springs" and look at the images you will see some really neat winter views of these hot springs we visited. A group of ladies went to the hot springs during our free time on Saturday. I'll talk about the springs in the picture captions.

 Beautiful fall colors and sunrise Saturday morning. So thankful for being woken up before my alarm to see this sunrise.

View from my window in the lodge.

View from the back balcony of the lodge. The lodge is situated by the mountain peaks known as the Collegiate Peaks of Colorado. Several of the peaks in the mountain range here is named after universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

This was called the soaking pool. The temperature of the water was 102. It's like being in a massive hot tub. The pools are all fed water by natural hot spring a.k.a. geothermal springs.

This river was very frigid cold mountain water flowing down, but underneath and by all those rocks on the left side of the picture are geothermal hot springs coming up from underground. The rocks were forming pools of water that were the perfect for soaking in. The cool river water would flow through making the water cool enough and the hot spring water was quite hot. Some pools formed by the rocks were too hot to even walk through. This was a nice place to sit with other ladies in the water and chat. Now if it was colder winter weather I'd say getting in one of the pools would be best because your body would get cold sitting in these shallow river pools.

Lounging along the river. The temperature was high 60s when we were there.

This is the other pool and the water in here was about 90 degrees. It had an area for laps as well as the right side for just soaking in. I'd love to go visit a hot springs area in Colorado during the winter time. There are many places throughout the state where geothermal hot springs are fed into resort like areas.

The past couple weeks have mainly involved adjusting to our new schedule with Caleb sleeping during days and working 3 nights a week. It's worked out pretty well for Caleb as once he falls asleep after work he can just keep on sleeping all day until he either has to wake up to get ready for work again or I wake him up so we can eat supper and spend the evening together. I feel like we are still getting a good bit of time together, it's just that now our time together is in the evenings after the sun is setting. This doesn't leave any time for us doing the fun outdoor things like hiking, taking day trips, or checking out new places. We're still working on trying to figure out how we can work that in. Caleb had such a wonderful and exciting surprise for me. He asked how I'd like to spend a few nights in a cabin somewhere just to get away the two of us and spend some daylight hours together outdoors having fun. Ahh, I was so excited because I love trips, staying at new places, and time with my man! I thought maybe Estes Park would be a great place to go because his Grandma has told us about so many of her wonderful memories of trips to Estes Park, and also it's right by Rocky Mountain National Park. Caleb found a pretty neat lodge place with different cabins you can rent that we are planning at staying. For the month of November Caleb always works his 3 nights straight in a row each week, and the schedule is set up so he has 4-5 days off in a row. Can't wait for this trip mid-November. It will be great quality time together.


Next Thursday we are heading to Gunnison to spend 3 days with Krista. We are very excited because there are some fun things happening right now in the Gunnison area. Krista and Daniel are engaged! Sounds like they are busy with wedding planning and details for the big day on January 5th. Next week will be fun to see them for the first time after getting engaged and spend a few days laughing, talking, and being together as family.

Think of some fun place near you that you could have some fun time together with your family. Maybe it is a place you haven't been to in years or maybe there is a touristy place close by you've never thought of visiting because you've lived where you are for so long. It's great for Caleb and I to be living in a new place because we are getting to explore together and see so many new places and God's beauty in his creation all over Colorado. Dear friend, I hope you'll take some time coming up in November to enjoy the beautiful part of the country you live in and be with family and friends.