July

We had our first big family road trip in July! We drove 2,000 miles through the state of Colorado and visited four National Parks! We are so thankful for our time together, all of the memories we made and all of our family photos!

Our first stop was at Moles Lake, we camped here for two nights. We had a beautiful campground to walk around, and a cute little mining town, Silverton, to spend the day in. It was a great way to kickoff our trip!

It was wet and freezing in the mine, so we needed hot chocolate afterwards!

They were pretty excited to pop popcorn in the woods :).

Our first National Park! The Black Canyon of the Gunnison!

For the parks we visited we always went first to the Visitor Center and learned about the park before we explored. They all had videos talking about the history of the parks, which was fascinating and a highlight for all of us.

We had to cut our picnic short and got caught up in a rainstorm!

The next day we made our trek to Rocky Moundation National Park and stayed the night in a really cute lodge in Granby. We had a little suite, took showers, made a microwave pizza, watched some game shows together and relaxed for the night. This was the funniest moment to remember…and illustrates how Dad handles anything to do with teeth. He turned his back and couldn’t watch as Asher pulled out a wiggly tooth, ha!

The next day we headed into Rocky Mountain National Park! Absolutely breathtaking.

We weren’t in the park for more than 10 minutes and there was major commotion and a Mama and Baby Moose sighting!

So cool that we saw snow and the Continental Divide!

We drove on a very narrow, windy road to make it above the Alpine trees. One of the most gorgeous sights we’ve ever seen.

This would be a good ad for our van. So thankful for this van and the smooth, trouble-free trip it gave us!

Clouds rolled in again and we had another rainy picnic and stroll!

They walked around performing this for people, ha!

We had a beautiful drive to our campsite. Albeit, a little scary. We drove on a gravel road for many many miles. This normally wouldn’t have been a big deal, except memories of the last time we drove on a gravel road on Beck’s Birthday camping trip a few years ago came flooding back. We really did not want to get stranded in the middle of nowhere again. Thank you God for guiding us through.

This will for sure go down as one of our all-time favorite vidoes of the boys. Here they are adventuring while Jeremy and I setup our campside. I can’t even. It’s so precious.

Recap and campground.

Dad’s yummy camping dinners were unbeatable! Also, you guys ditched me!

The next day we didn’t plan too well. We started on a hike that turned out to be way longer and intense than any of us expected, and once we were knee-deep in it we didn’t want to turn back. Props to the boys for hanging in there because it was a solid medium to hard hike for 5 miles. We definitely earned a big lunch after this hike! It was sure beautiful though and we all felt like we really accomplished something worth noting.

We ended up booking a room for the night in Denver at a hotel that was a total dive. We all have some funny memories from this experience! When we upgraded big time to a really nice hotel, Beck embraced the robe life, ha!

Water World! We were so excited to take Asher and Beck to the largest water park in the U.S! My Grandpa brought me here when I was about 8 years old and it’s always been one of my favorite memories. Jeremy was so kind to reroute our trip so we can spend the day here with the boys. We had one of the most fun days together as a family!

Our next National Park was the Great Sand Dunes! So beautiful!

We spend the night in Pagosa Springs and enjoyed taking in the cute little town. We weren’t impressed with the sulfur smell of the springs, but it was fun to experience and beautiful to look at…just not to smell :).

We went to a cute restaurant with live music. Jeremy paid this nice man a huge tip to replay a song we all enjoyed and recorded it.

Proud of us all for not allowing cystic fibrosis to stand in the way of our trip and making these memories together.

The next day we headed out to check out beautiful Durango. We spent the day up on Purgatory Mountain riding the Alpine Slides, playing mini-golf and a few fun activities, and having lunch together. We ended at a nice hotel with a pool that the boys loved splashing around in, and a great restaurant with yummy food and the game show network for entertainment :).

Our last National Park stop was Mesa Verde! It was really cute to us how excited Asher was to see this site in person. He had studied it in school, and out of all the National Parks we were planning to see, this was the one he was most excited about…and this is the one that was his favorite out of them all.