Hanging Lake, Colorado

My search of best trails in Colorado sent us to the town of Glenwood Springs to hike the Hanging Lake trail. It's a mountaintop lake that pours down as a giant waterfall into the Colorado River. We hiked alongside the waterfall/river the entire way and actually crossed over it seven times using bridges. I was super impressed with the kids hiking on this one. It was steep with large rocks to climb most of the way up and the kids hiked about the first third of it. Asher actually complained that his legs were "owie on the inside" when he woke the next morning. Ah, those are sore muscles, little guy!

 

I found it very interesting that when I70 was routed thru Glenwood Canyon it took 30 years to complete due to environmental protests and requirements to leave the canyon as undisturbed as possible. There was very little blasting done, and where it was necessary they brought artists in to sculpt and paint the exposed rock to match the canyon walls! In the end it cost 40 times the average cost per mile for the 12 mile stretch- a staggering $490 million (equivalent to $800 million today)!

On our hike the kids saw their first dandelion and had fun blowing the seeds, 

however Asher thought he was supposed to blow on the stem, ha!

This is the view from our campground near Glenwood Springs. 

Those mountains looked like they were covered in green velvet, and coming from the desert, 

they just did not even look real. Notice you can see the Colorado River and the 

working railroad tracks are right at the base of the mountains.

As Daddy hooked up the RV, we took a walk around the campground and Asher held Journey's hand to help her on the steep part and they ended up holding hands and running together most of the walk. It was so sweet and sadly I didn't bring a camera, oh well. 

As we continued on towards Denver, we stopped for an outdoor lunch at a lakeside marina in Dillon. There was a playground nearby and we were happy to spend more time there admiring the huge snow-capped mountains and lake. This place was just gorgeous!

Next stop....Denver!