Weekend Recap, Vol. 1

Good morning, friends! Today I thought I’d share a little recap of my weekend here in Colorado. It’s only my 5th week here in Boulder, so I’m always looking for new adventures on the weekend, especially since my new PhD program keeps me fairly busy during the week. I’ve made a silent pact with myself to work hard on the weekdays so that I can genuinely enjoy my weekends and spend them exploring the great outdoors.

Saturday, I had my first official photo shoot for the blog with Cheyenne, and let me tell you…she is absolutely amazing! I met Cheyenne through an online database of photographers and I feel like I hit the jackpot with her. I cannot wait to show you what we’ve been working on! For all my family in Oklahoma, she is originally from Texas but attended school at Oklahoma Baptist University majoring in theology and minoring in photography. She just moved here from Idaho a few months ago, so we are learning the area together. We met up in the wee hours of the morning at a little outdoor walking mall in Denver where we first met for dinner a couple weekends ago. Stay tuned for our pictures in the coming days.

Naturally, after the shoot, Allen and I  were starving per the usual. Cheyenne reccomened a new-to-us breakfast place in Denver called Snooze Eatery. It is one of the cutest little places I’ve been to and offers truly unique dishes, all of which are centered around your common breakfast foods. But nothing about this darling place is common.

We were very tired from waking up at 4am to prepare for the shoot, so first things first…caffeine was in order. In true Kristin and Allen form, we took our caffeine with loads and loads of chocolate and whipped cream. While Allen ordered the hot chocolate, I dove a little deeper into a warm mug of mocha.

Saturday morning was a little chilly, the first time I’ve felt like fall might be approaching. I’ve actually been surprised at how warm it still is here in Colorado. I’ve lived in southern Texas the past 7 years, where we typcially have two seasons–extreme summer and mild summer. Mild summer typically occurs around Thanksgiving and lasts into early spring, but extreme summer (hot hot humidity) is present the majority of the time. Ever since I’ve known I was moving to Colorado, I’ve been preparing psyching myself up for a real Colorado winter. Still in fact, psyching myself up. The good news is that I can finally take my wool coats and sweaters out of storage. (There wasn’t much use for them in Texas.) But I digress…where was I again?

Right, coffee! I go through cycles of heavy coffee drinking, which seem to coincide with periods of intense stress in school. This last time, I was preparing for my M.S. defense and subsequent publishing of my thesis. All the baristas at Starbucks knew me by name. Luckily for my waistline, I hadn’t had a cup since early June when I defended, so this was my first cup in a while. It was delicious!

While I like the taste of coffee in my drink, Allen’s more of a “morning milkshake” kind of guy (also known as, mocha frappachinos). Actually, Allen’s a “milkshake with every meal” kind of guy, but again I digress. He seemed to enjoy his handmade Snooze hot chocolate this morning.

I enjoy the fact that Allen didn’t get enough whipped cream on his face the first time around and in fact went back for a second nose dive into his hot chocolate.

While my go to breakfast is usually scrambled eggs topped with salsa, avocado and as many red peppers, mushrooms, olives, and broccoli as I can get, I wanted to try something more in tune with the uniqueness of the restaurant. So I opted for the Breakfast Pot Pie, which boasts of homemade rosemary sausage gravy and a fluffy puff pastry topped with an egg, sunny-side up. If you know me well, you know I love rosemary!  And oh my…the hash browns were infused with rosemary too, and were un-believably good! I think a home version of these are in order.

Allen is typically a little more adventurous than me when it comes to meats and things. He opted for the Chilaquiles Benedict, which was a mix between huevos rancheros and a slightly spicy eggs-benedict, all topped with barbocoa beef. “Everything good and great,” as Allen put it. You can see he wasted no time getting down to business.

As usual, we stuffed ourselves to the brim, so we took the remainder of our drinks to go for the drive back to Boulder. We ended up relaxing the rest of Saturday and went to see the movie Meru in the evening. It was fun seeing Allen light up throughout the movie–he really is meant to be in the mountains. I love it when he is happy.

Sunday we set out to climb our first 14er with one of Allen’s good friends who lives in Breckenridge. While I love being active and am no stranger to being in excellent shape (working out on the Texas A&M club soccer team will do that), I am coming off of a pretty serious “thesis diet”, whereby all my excess time was spent writing and running simulations and downing coffee and writing and coding some more, followed by of course more coffee. Did I mention my coffee binges are periodic and in phase with school? Needless to say, I’m not in stellar shape right now and on top of that I gained about 5,400 feet in elevation during the move to Boulder from south Texas. So while I am always, always up for getting outside, being active and climbing mountains, I knew that I needed to take it easy–at least as easy as climbing 14ers goes? As a result, we chose Mt. Bierstadt at an elevation of 14,060 ft for our first climb.

The drive was about an  hour and a half from Boulder, so we set out early on Sunday morning with our Einstein bagels in hand (and schmear on our faces). Don’t you just love the word schmear? It’s so fun to say! We listened to some of our new favorite jams, which include songs from the soundtrack of Scrotal Recall. Now wait before you judge because this Netflix original show from BBC is really quite compelling! While the show does have an extremely crude-sounding name, it is actually more along the lines of a romantic comedy and in all seriousness, it’s a really good watch! Allen put it on as a joke when one of my girl friends was visiting from out of town, which could’ve been really embarrassing for me (he likes doing that). But instead we ended up watching all of the first season in one sitting. So check out the soundtrack on Spotify and if you are feeling adventurous, I’d recommend the show on Netflix as well!

At any rate, we drove through Guanella Pass on the way to Mt. Bierstadt, where autumn has already arrived. The lush golds and rich reds of the trees, combined with the crisp bite of cold on our noses got me so excited for the coming of fall.

As we were driving through all of the beautiful autumn colors, I couldn’t help but think we should try to camp there before the snow comes. If you know of a good camping area nearby, let me know. After driving up the pass, we continued through the Arapaho National Forest. The Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests host two 14ers, Mt. Bierstadt (14,060 ft) and Mt. Evans (14,264 ft).

In case there was any confusion, I was very excited to start the trek!

Mt. Bierstadt is the peak on the right of the picture below. Most of the beginning part of the trail is dirt–steep, but dirt. It’s only the last quarter mile or so that is a scramble.

After a few hours of hiking (and 2,700 feet in elevation gain), we finally reached the top! And let me tell you…the views. Oh, the views were spectacular! In any direction you looked,  Colorado was stunning.

Allen caught this moment of me being absolutely captivated by the view, and perhaps glad to be taking a break from the climb.

And while I quickly jumped to the summit pictures, it wasn’t as easy of a climb as I made it sound. I actually experienced my first bout of altitude sickness, which made the last leg of the climb pretty miserable. I need to look into remedies and herbs that can help with altitude sickness for next time. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to know! Feel free to leave a comment below.

After taking in the views up top, we began our decent back down the mountain. I noticed that I began to feel better around tree level, and I was pretty excited to get back onto the dirt trails after the scramble.

As we approached the trailhead, I took one last look back at Mt. Bierstadt. It wasn’t easy to climb, but it was my first 14er and I couldn’t be more excited and proud that I pushed through to the end and summited! It was really special to climb my first 14er with Allen, as it was his first as well! Which 14er should I climb next? Any recommendations?

On our way back to Boulder, we stopped in Golden at our absolutely favorite burger place here in Colorado, called Bob’s Atomic Burgers. It’s what I would describe as the burger version of Whichwich, where you select your sandwich preferences right on the wrapper. I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great burger and malt. My favorites are the chocolate malt, sweet potato fries, and really any (or all) of the toppings you like (my regulars are the grilled mushrooms and onions, pepper jack cheese, and lettuce and tomato).

One of my friends who lives near Golden took me to Bob’s Atomic after a hike years ago, and it has forevermore become my go-to post-hiking food. Sometimes it’s the only thing keeping me going on the return journey. Visions of chocolate malts dancing in my head is a pretty powerful motivator. Then again, for me really anything chocolate is. Ever notice me speeding up on the trail? You now know why. What’s your favorite post-hiking food?

Did you do anything fun last weekend? I’d love to know!

 

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