A Surprise Weekend Adventure, Day 1

It's been a week since the surprise weekend adventure and I have yet to tell you about it.

I sincerely apologize.

Truth is I've been in a pollen and antihistamine induced catatonic state. Yeah, it's a real condition. Anyway, I have lots to tell you. So, I had a diet Dr. Pepper in hopes that it would perk me up enough to get this done.

I think I'm ok, now.

So, here's what happened.......

Cliff had been planning a surprise weekend trip for me for two months. I found out about it a couple of weeks ago because he needed to tell me how to pack. He said, "Pack warm clothes, but pack light. Take only one pair of shoes....running shoes or hiking shoes and a light jacket. We may be roughing it at some point." I questioned him as to where we were going and he just said, "Well, you've been wanting to see some snow.....so, I planned a trip." I questioned again, "Hiking shoes, are we going hiking?" He said, "Yes." And that was it. So, I tried my best to guess where he was taking me and nothing made sense.

Earlier, last week, he told me we were leaving at 3:30 a.m., Friday. I thought, we must be going way up north to start driving that early in the morning. Not to mention, it was so warm down south that I figured there would be no snow in the mountains of NC or even TN. Hiking on the Appalachian Trail came to mind. But still, I couldn't make any sense of it because he said there would be snow.

Finally, Thursday night I found out that we were flying. That piece of information opened up two possibilities. My first thought was that he was taking me to Wyoming to map the trail I'll be taking on my Women's Bike Tour in July. I started getting very excited.

So, we left for the Charleston airport promptly at 3:30 a.m., Friday morning. He checked my luggage and got my boarding pass without me knowing where we were headed. He only handed me one boarding pass and that was to Atlanta. Well, that threw a wrench at my idea of going to Wyoming. I couldn't imagine why we were going to Atlanta. I wondered if we would be renting a car in Atlanta and driving on to our destination, but that really wasn't making any sense, either. So, I waited it out. Oh boy, the anticipation!

We arrived in Atlanta and that's when Cliff pulled out the second boarding pass and handed it to me. Well, I couldn't see a ding dong thing that was written on it because I didn't have my glasses on. I just followed Cliff to the next gate and that's when I saw where we were headed. Denver. I smiled! He was taking me to see my youngest daughter. Apparently, they had secretly planned a few adventures. I was a happy girl.

Day 1:

 

Saturday morning, our first adventure was to go trail running at the Red Rocks trails, specifically the Matthews Winters Park trail.  Good thing I decided to pack my trail running shoes. I figured they would suffice for hiking or running. It was a good choice.

You can see the trial meandering off in the distance.

 

A close up view of the trail. It was wide and the dirt was compacted, which made it easy to run on. Cliff, Jason and Whitney ran on ahead of me. That's the three of them ahead of me on the trail.  Whitney was determined to outrun her triathlete daddy. I just ran my pace. 

 

The uphills were tough and my breathing suffered at the high altitude. But, I kept going.

We had to cross a couple of streams like this one.

 

The second stream was a little deeper than this and had rocks lined up in a single row. I assumed to cross the stream or more like a creek, at this point, that I needed to cross on the rocks. I hopped up on the first rock....and....

 

SPLAT!         I FELL IN!        HARD!

 

The rock tipped and I fell so fast that I was gasping for breath before I knew what happened. After the initial shock of the cold water, I realized that I had hit rocks underwater as well and it hurt. A man running by, helped me get up and asked if I was ok. Of course, I told him I was fine. I was totally embarrassed. I did a quick assessment of myself and saw blood dripping from my hand, elbow and leg. When I fell, I tried to catch myself to no avail. I bruised my big toe, scraped my leg near my knee, scraped my elbow, and must have landed on my hip and upper arm because they were very sore. I saw Jason up ahead and told him that I fell. He came back down the trail to check on me. Cliff called me on the cell phone to check on me. I told both of them that I was fine and to go on without me, that I was just going back to the car. They didn't need to cut their run short on my account. Jason decided to go back with me. Whitney and Cliff ran on. They both had something to prove. Waiting at the trail head, Jason and I saw Whitney and Cliff coming to the finish. Whitney came in first ahead of Cliff. She was happy to have beat her daddy, the triathlete.

 

We wrapped up our trail run on Saturday with lunch in Morrison at the Roof Top Tavern. Morrison was the town Whitney and I ran through during our Revel Rockies Half Marathon last August.

 

Day 2 of the adventure continues, tomorrow. You must come back by to see what happened next.

 



Til then,

Laurie