Week in Review (September 24 - September 30)

Tuesday (11,670 steps) - Row and walked Olive before work. StairMaster at lunch, doing the Eiffel Tower again.

Took Olive for a walk when I got home from work.l

Wednesday (21,325 steps) - Walked Olive before work. Did my run/workout at lunch. Due to the closure that I'd experienced last week, I went the other direction on the path and it was disgusting. Saw multiple dead and partly decomposed rats on the trail. There were also dozens and dozens of homeless people and lots of garbage. Not my favorite.

Ben and I met up at Parry's for a happy hour beer and then we went out to eat at the sushi restaurant down the street for our (4th) wedding anniversary.

We planned to watch Independence Day 2, but we both fell asleep. We are old people.

Thursday (10,571 steps) - Work from home and Peloton ride before taking Olive for a walk at lunch. Saw a random post from New Terrain on Facebook that indicated they were releasing a special beer for Colorado School of Mines and Blaster.  Of course that meant I had to go... I worked from the brewery from 3 until I got off at 4:30. It was insanely hot.

Ben met me after work, but we didn't stay long since it was hot AND there was going to be a band (which we don't care for). Torchy's for dinner and finished watching Independence Day.

Friday (15,179 steps) - Wash Park with Olive and the gang!

Olive went to work with me, met Joyce, and even got to go into a signing. Exciting day for her. After work we rushed home since we still had to pack for our weekend getaway. Took Olive for a walk while Ben was packing. 

Unfortunately, unlike last weekend, it was not an easy drive up to the mountains. We did not want to run into the same issues of nothing being open for food, so I was checking what was dog-friendly in Idaho Springs and found out Tommyknocker is! I haven't been there in ages. They have completely revamped their menu (smaller, probably more expensive, still good).

Not only are they dog friendly, they treat dogs like VIPs! They bring out dog bowls with ice water and even beds for them to be comfortable on the floor AND a special dog menu. 

We had enough time to grab a beer out Outer Range before checking into our hotel.

Saturday (31,550 steps) - Took Olive for a quick walk near our place, it was shaping up to be a beautiful morning!

Ben decided to get breakfast out instead of at the hotel. French toast, bacon and eggs. Yum.

Ben had planned a route for us that he indicated would be a decent amount of climbing, but mostly on single track. We did get a late start, so we had to work a bit to find parking, but it worked out. We also didn't expect to have so little phone service at the start, so it was a bit challenging getting the route put on our watches, but I was able to get it done before we headed up.

The lower road had a decent amount of water access for at least a half mile, which was good news for Olive! Probably a little over a mile up we arrived at this mine and passed a big group of people to head up on some single track.

It was hot, so it was nice to have shade in the trees for a bit. Most of the climbing was on fire roads, so it didn't feel as bad as single track. I'm not really sure why that is though. We had a great view most of the way up. Super pretty with the mountain peaks and fall colors.

Once we got above tree line, I was wondering where on earth we were actually going. Ben was insistent we were NOT going to the top of Baldy, just that we were going to some parking lot. 

I was definitely getting tired and not sure how much more I wanted to do, and based on the route on my watch, it seemed like we still had a lot to do. Ben insisted it was a quarter mile to where he wanted to go and it turns out he was right. We sat on a log and had a snack before heading back down. We had routed an alternative route (to cut back mileage a bit) and I'm glad we had the map, because not sure that we would have found the right trails! There was at least a mile of bigger, loose rocks that neither Olive nor I super loved.

We came upon an opening in the trail with a bench and sat for a minute. Olive enjoyed the break too.

Finally, we got off the garbage loose rock section and moved onto what was my favorite part of the route. And somehow, we did not see ANY bikes or other hikers. Truly bizarre!

The True Romance overlook was really pretty as well.

We were all pretty happy to be done! Olive's longest activity at just over 11 miles. Go, Olive! We met Lee at Outer Range for a beer. We decided to pick up Chinese food at J J's and then decided to bring it over to Syndicate, the newest brewery in Dillon.

We unfortunately got bamboozled. Their menu had a bunch of IPAs on tap, but then we got there and there was only one, and it was marginal. Seems they are primarily German beers, which aren't our favorites :(

It WAS dog friendly, so that was nice. We went to the hotel and watched Step Brothers and some of the Halloween movies. I must say that I must never have watched Halloween 3, because it made ZERO sense.

Sunday (20,141 steps) - Took Olive for a quick walk and had breakfast at the hotel. We packed everything up and headed up to Vail. We had plans to hike Booth Falls. Unfortunately, you can no longer park at the trail head OR the lower lot by the road. We were told to take the shuttle in. Ben was not crazy about that day, but I said we should just do it. We had to park at the transit center in Vail, which was a nightmare anyway because of the farmer's market in town. We got all the way to the bus station only to be told that they don't allow dogs on the buses. So FYI, if you want to do that hike with a dog, it's basically impossible without a person that is NOT going that can drop you off. Really sad that people ruined this for everyone.

To  make the best of it, we walked through the village and decided to hike up Berry Picker. We did this once a few years ago and I remember it being tough. We confirmed that we would be able to take the gondola down with Olive and off we went. It may not have been what we wanted to do, but it was GORGEOUS!!!

The lower section is hard and hot and exposed (seriously, it was supposedly like 60 and felt 20 degrees hotter.

It was interesting to me how many people we saw hiking down. We did not encounter nearly as many people hiking up - but that's probably because it's a ton of vert going up a ski slope. 

It was basically a struggle for all of us after yesterday's big day, so we just took a ton of pictures. I think the ones I am sharing are less than half of the ones we took.

An unintentional/intentional selfie with Olive. Best we can do with her!

She actually has a leaf on the top of her head in this one

And here I have a leaf that blew into my front pocket

Finally arrived at the top. There were a zillion people. I had to look it up later, but people pay FIFTY-NINE DOLLARS to ride the gondola up. $59!!!!! Lunacy. They had food and a bar at the top and we had a beer and enjoyed the scenery before Olive's first gondola ride!

She was a little spooked, but did good!

Went into the village and got lunch at Garfiinkle's. View beautiful, beer and food was meh.

We had been watching the traffic all afternoon and it still seemed like it was going to take a long time to get home, so we opted to go to Outer Range for a bit and see if it calmed down. Finally at maybe 7, with the maps saying it was going to take an hour longer than usual, I suggested that we just get the drive over with. We started to head out and about 4 miles before the tunnel we hit gridlock. Time kept going up on our arrival. Suddenly, it jumped up over another HOUR after we got through the tunnel. Some quick digging showed that there was an accident that closed all but one lane of the highway. Ben thought we should just turn around and get a hotel in Dillon for the night, which is what we did. We turned around and got to the hotel at 8:20 and were told we would need to hurry because the onsite restaurant closed at 9 pm. We were able to get food, and it was "good," but incredibly pricey for what it was.

Monday (11,856 steps) - Had to get up by 4:15 so that we would have time to drive home and both of us get ready for work. I showered and took Olive for a walk and headed in. I don't normal work in the office on Mondays, but with it being Nicole's last day a bunch of us were going to go out to lunch. They picked Cheesecake Factory, which I haven't been to in years. Sad to report that they don't have the grilled cheese anymore. This turkey club was pretty good though.

Even though we went insanely early, it took forever and I think our lunch ended up being almost two hours. THEN, we had a "party" with cake later. After work I headed home to walk Olive. Since I'm starting sober October again, we went to 4 Noses for beer and Korean BBQ. We started playing trivia, but we are just terrible, so we left in the middle of it.

We were home early and Ben picked "Night Swim" for our movie. Fairly terrible.

Stats:

• 122,292 steps
• 20.42 miles run
• 14.94 miles walked
• 61 minutes of cardio
• 30 minutes of strength