A weekend in Pueblo and the San Isabel National Forest

Colorado is a great weekend destination to give us flatlanders a change of scenery (if you are into driving that is) and I look forward to going at least once a year. Our plan for this trip was to do some hiking, which surprisingly we haven't done a lot of on our previous adventures. Violet tagged along for her first ever road trip. Spoiler - she is an amazing traveler!

We started off on Friday, July 4 with our end point in Pueblo. Heading west we ran into a storm around Dodge City, saw a gorgeous sunset and then had 360 degree views of fireworks.

Well done!

On Saturday morning we headed to West Spanish Peak/San Isabel National Forest with the intention to see how far we could make it up an almost 14er after a late start and absolutely no preparation. However, we set our Google maps directions to just 'West Spanish Peak' and not a specific trail. It started off well and cool:

The road up to the trail we randomly ended up choosing was very quiet and had several signs identifying the different ranches that were on the land along the way.

At one point my partner mentioned that we didn't put in an actual trail into our directions as an endpoint. We saw what appeared to be a trail but I said, "we need to go further to see if there is a better one!" This ended poorly with us having to maneuver our non 4 wheel drive vehicle to turn around on a tiny mountain dirt road getting too close to the edge for one of us that isn't fond of heights. We returned to where my partner had initially suggested we stop and after 3 false starts at what we thought were trails, and quickly realized weren't, we found the Apishapa Trail.

We crossed paths with only one other person during the entire duration of our 5 mile hike. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like maybe we were ignorantly unaware of something that only Coloradans knew...

Our hike had many brightly colored flowers:

Several fungi:

Vegetation so lush and dense that I was sure we were all going to have a minimum of 300 ticks each:

Trees that were equally interesting and beautiful:

And awesome views:

Despite all the cool nature around us we still have our limits and the last mile back to the car was torturous.

Violet is d-o-n-e.

Once we got back to Pueblo we set our sights on some din din. Our options were slightly limited with our 4 legged companion but we found a dog friendly Irish pub where the staff oohed and aahed over Violet who behaved like the perfect little puppy out on the town:

Just like the hike, downtown Pueblo was oddly quiet for a Saturday night. We had our dinner, a couple drinks and then headed back to the hotel to chillax. Violet did not need to be told twice.

A bed all to herself

Sunday morning we trekked back home full of memories, caffeine and cuteness overload in the backseat.

Backseat Passenger Princess