Continuing with our Colorado adventures!  We left off in Denver on the day before Thanksgiving.  Back in 2015, I showed you pictures of our Rocky Mountain turkey day, so let’s roll right on to Black Friday.  For years, I’ve fantasized about spending Black Friday on a peaceful family hike in the wilderness, but since we usually trim our tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we’re always busy decorating the house and getting ready for Christmas (which is also fun, don’t get me wrong).  But this year, since we were out of town, our tree-trimming festivities were pushed back and we had a wide-open agenda on Black Friday.  So my hiking dreams became a reality!

We started our day with a “walk around the block.”  Dan lives in Roosevelt National Forest (yes, he lives in the National Forest – I know you’re jealous; I am too) so when he “takes the dog for a quick walk around the block,” what he really means is that he’s hiking on gorgeous wooded trails.  We loved checking out his neighborhood of a few other cabins tucked into wooded clearings.  (My hermit heart was singing.)

We saw this amazing sign ^ and I had to snap a picture to send to my sister-in-law Emma, who keeps backyard chickens.  She totally needs a sign like this for her property.

And we took the occasional break to snap a picture and send it back east.  Hi, Mom!

(If you’re wondering whether Dan is wearing a ladies’ hat, the answer is: yes, he is.  Again.)

If this was my “block,” I’d walk around it every day!

We headed home for a quick lunch, and then were back at it, on our way down to Boulder to hit the trails there.  Our destination…

Chautauqua Park, home of Boulder’s famous Flatirons!  The Flatirons are beautiful rock formations towering above Boulder.  I was itching to see them, but sadly, it started snowing fairly hard and our view was obscured.  Even without a crystal clear day, though, Chautauqua Park was beautiful.

You can see a little bit of the Flatirons here.  The whole park was dusted with sparkling snowflakes.

We walked about a third of a mile into the park and enjoyed the scenery, then decided to turn around because the kiddos’ cheeks were starting to feel quite chilly.

But not before we snapped a family picture!

(I know they look miserable, but they’ll thank me one day when they have a family yearbook to look back on and remember the fun we had together.)

(“You sure about that, Mom?”)

We turned around and picked our way over the slippery, snow-covered trail back towards the car.  The view of Boulder was almost as pretty as the view of the Flatirons!  We were all hungry and thirsty after a day of playing in the snow, so Dan suggested we head into town and hit a German biergarten that he liked.  Sounds good to me!  As we walked through the downtown area, I mused that I should probably order a beer, since we were going to a biergarten, but that what I really wanted was something warm.  Imagine my delight to see a mug of gluhwein delivered to the table next to us, just as we were opening our menus.  I will have one of those, please.

I’d never had gluhwein before.  It smelled incredible and tasted even better.  Only complaint was that it was gone too quickly.  Yum.

We also split a pretzel and an order of fries.  Peanut and the boys handled the fries themselves, but I put a hurting on the pretzel.  It was almost as good as the pretzels our DC friend Stephen makes.  Almost.

Not a bad way to spend Black Friday!  I’d say that two hikes and a German biergarten made for a far better day than fighting the crowds at Target!

Next up: Steve’s first visit to a big national park!