Since this seems to be blog catch up day, I’m going to post about our summer vacation about a month later.

In August, we all found ourselves with a long weekend off and thought, let’s get out of here! Now, others might just take off and find a campground.  I prefer to come home to a stove and a hot shower and something between me and the bears besides a sheet of nylon. All the cabins I looked for were booked, but I was able to find a VRBO condo in Grand Lake that looked nice.

We had such a great time.  The first day we drove up leisurely, stopping on the way in Granby, maybe? I can’t remember–one of those tiny mountain towns. There was a great road side stop with a playground and a kids’ fishing lake. We stopped for a break and a little fishing. Did we catch anything? Uh, no.

The condo was nice and backed up to a nice open space where the kids could run around and be free. We went to check out Grand Lake and later that evening we walked across the road where there was a lake and tried again for fish, and again didn’t catch anything.

The next day we went back to Grand Lake and  rented a family kayak from these guys: http://mountainpaddlers.com/.  I was a little worried about how the girl would do with this, but it was fantastic! We were one of the first few people out on the lake, before all the annoying motorboats, so we had a peaceful kayak around the lake.  The highlight was seeing an osprey nest up close, and then seeing one fish and grab one out of the water!

After that we just hung out on the “beach” for a while, which was just fine with the girl.

Later that day we went for a short hike and more fishing.  It was so, so beautiful at this little lake.  I never tired of seeing the osprey flying overhead and skimming the water, hunting for fish.

I even tried my hand at fishing.

Again, we didn’t catch anything, but had a great time all the same.

Our last day, we took the long way back home and drove through Rocky Mountain National Park. We happened upon a ranger guided hike for kids! We had to wade through some tall tall grass, and at the end he had the kids draw pictures of animals that had adapted to their environment.

Then it was time to head home, but not before one last stop for fishing.

And…HE CAUGHT SOMETHING. A FISH. A real live floppy fish was on the end of the line.  We were so surprised we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves! While reeling the little guy in (it was maybe 6 or 8 inches long when we saw it) it wriggled its way off the hook and swam away. It was so exciting! I sort of get the whole fishing thing now, even if you do have to deal with a dead animal at the end of it all if you’re successful.

We loved it and will definitely head back.  It’s not that far away and one of the nice things is that all the out of state tourists go to one of the big mountain towns, so it’s largely Colorado families out there and it’s a nice low-key environment. Without any bears.