Time for our annual Crested Butte hike! Friends were hiking from Aspen to Crested Butte so we drove over on Saturday to meet them with plans to hike back on Sunday. This is definitely the luxury way to do it! You can bring whatever you want as there are cars to take it back so you don’t have to pack everything for hiking and the overnight stay into your hiking backpack. This is the way I plan to do it every year now 🙂 Also, it made hiking with my dog (on her fifth birthday) much easier as there was no need to make a pet friendly shuttle request. And how could I have left her behind on her birthday???

I must have been quite tired from the Friday Capitol lake hike followed by America at Belly Up as it took the longest ever to hike (more like a leisurely walk) for a total of 7 hours from Schofield Park to Maroon Bells trailhead by the lake… That is a whole hour longer than usual (for us) and it was fortunate that my friend took her Spot GPS as her husband was able to track us to avoid any concern over our tardiness! There were still lots of pretty wildflowers and also tons of very interesting mushrooms.