Colorado Hiking: Kansas Style

In case you didn't know, school is hard. And time consuming. As you can see by my lack of posts over the last few weeks, I haven't had a lot of time to keep up with blogging. But my constant hard work on my class has payed off. I believe my teacher has used the words "wow," "excellent," and "outstanding" in feedback to my projects. So, that's cool.

Somehow, Matt and I have found some time to do fun things, too. Last weekend, we took a winter hike with my dad, because we live in Colorado and we can hike in January here. Colorado's awesome like that. But we couldn't head up to any of the trails in the mountains because there's lots of snow up there and we don't have snowshoes... yet. We will someday. For now, we stayed East and hiked "Kansas Style," meaning there were absolutely no mountains or inclines on the entire hike. But it was still cool.

We headed to Barr Lake and took the 9 mile trail that circles the entire lake. The first part of the hike was really pretty, with offshoots from the main road that took us through a few different areas.

Walking over the frozen lake.

Lots of geese.

Despite the beautiful temperature, there was still quite a bit of mud and ice on the road, making it a little difficult to find our footing.

Walking in the mud.

The frozen lake and trees created a pretty cool winter scene.

Half of the lake is a wildlife refuge for bald eagles that live on the lake. We managed to see a few from a couple of wildlife viewing areas.

Those very, very small dots on the ice are actually small eagles.

In the center of the picture, you can see two eagles perched on a branch.

Even though it was from a distance, it was pretty cool to see such beautiful creatures.

Once we had passed the main viewing areas, the trail got a little more boring.

Look, more animals! Cows!

While slipping and sliding on mud and ice, we kept on trudging. It felt like a lot more than 9 miles.

About half-way around. You can see the other side of the shore in the distance.

The terrain was certainly less pretty in the second half of the hike.

Ahh, nature.

Somehow, we made it around. I was pretty tired at the end, and my legs were sore from the constant effort to keep from falling in the mud. Luckily, no muddy face-plant for me!

At the end.

I think taking time to do things like this will be very important in keeping my sanity during this grad school program. We have a few more fun things coming up! But for now, homework awaits...