More exploring

Landon is doing cross country again this year (and loving it and doing really well). As part of the season they have a meet in Aspen that is early on a Saturday morning. So the team makes a little weekend party of it where all the families go up on Friday afternoon and have dinner together and takeover a hotel for the night. Then we get up early to head to the meet and go have fun in the area afterwards. We decided to go see Maroon Bells, which are two side by side 14ers and probably the most picturesque. I suggest you google Maroon Bells to see some really spectacular pictures. The scenery did not disappoint. It's incredibly popular, they often have to close the park down because there are too many people there. All summer you can't even drive in, you have to take a shuttle bus from Aspen because there are so many people who want to visit. But we were lucky enough to get in on the first weekend they were allowing cars in for the season. I just wish it had been one week earlier, I think the leaves would have still been on the trees, and that would have been really amazing.

Aspen was something to behold. You can definitely see that it's an elite sort of place and why it attracts so many rich and famous and they make sure to keep it that way. We decided to take Independence Pass home. It's closed in the winter because it's one of those roads that's so high up it's hard to maintain in all the snow. It was a beautiful, crazy drive. It's get down to only one lane in a couple of places! The views were spectacular, our pictures don't do it justice.

This is on a switchback just before you get to the top. If you look on the left you can see the road that goes to the top and down on the right is the road coming up out of the valley.