Day 5 - The Legend of El Dorado Canyon

Miles traveled:

By Car - 70ish mi

By Foot/Paw/Other - 6.9 mi

Car Entertainment - Bare Naked Ladies!  BNL is actually playing tonight at Red Rock Amphitheatre here in Colorado.  If it wasn't such a pain to get to Red Rocks I would have tried to go...I just didn't want to leave R&C that long.  

So R&C got a live concert in the car all day with special guest, me!

One lesson we learned yesterday is to get to the parks early because parking can be a nightmare.  So we did exactly that and headed out bright and early to El Dorado Canyon State Park.  Eldorado Canyon State Park 

We decided to hike Fowler Trail since it was labeled easy and scenic.  It definitely paid off on the scenery!  What an incredibly beautiful place!

You know it's going to be a good day when the view is already this good from the parking lot!

We started off on our four mile out and back trail and right away knew the terrain was going to be much more enjoyable for R&C.  It was also about 65 degrees when we started hiking so it was perfect for them!

I took a ton of great photos along the way, here are a few of my favorites.

We only encountered dead wildlife, and it was a clear reminder of the circle of life.  Along one of the flats we came across a half eaten deer leg!  Yikes!  R&C were very curious and it took all my weight an strength to pull them away from it.

There were also rumors of a rattlesnake by some other hikers, so we bolted through that area to make sure we missed it!

Notably both R&C learned to drink out of the Camelbak hose this hike which will pay dividends the rest of the trip, and it's hilarious to watch.

Charlie was especially tired on the way back, and being the smart girl she is, she would basically sprint to every spot with a shade tree and then lay down for a few minutes.  This is a collage of just a fraction of the times she did it.

After our hike we spent the afternoon at Coot Lake Coot Lake | City of Boulder (bouldercolorado.gov)  so R&C could cool off, clean up and swim.  The swimming ended up more like just wading in the water.  They aren't really sure yet about just jumping in, but they are curious and after a couple more times I think they will dive right in.  

I even threw a ball into the water to entice them to go get it, but they just whined at it while inching closer.  This is as close as Rhino got to it.

At this point we were all pretty exhausted so we decided to head back to Nederland and take a nap.

Off to Grand Junction in the morning!