Colorado: Day 5: Hiking the Maroon Bells

On our fifth day in Colorado, we woke up in a pleasantly chilly room, with the window open to let in the fresh mountain air, and the uncommon luxury of having absolutely no plan for the day ahead. We smiled and said good morning and tried really hard to think of the last time we had both felt so rested - we couldn’t come up with an answer.  In the past few nights we had readjusted to a much more natural sleeping schedule, between being outside and active all day and then having no distractions to keep us up for extra hours at night.  

I put on my fuzzy blue fleece to go pick-up coffee from our favorite coffee shop in Aspen - Victoria’s Espresso.  I carried home an americano and black coffee for Mike, a flat white for me, and a scrumptious cheddar-chive scone for us to nibble on while Mike cooked up a hearty plateful of thick bacon and crispy fried eggs for breakfast.

After breakfast, we curled up on the couch to read for a few minutes, before discussing what we wanted to do with our day.  We decided to take advantage of another picture-perfect day in Aspen and the fact that our bodies felt better than expected after rafting and rock climbing and head to the Maroon Bells for a hike.

Even the sign that renamed the location the “Deadly Bells” couldn’t keep us from setting out on a hike to Crater Lake.  The views were breathtaking, as were the many steep hills.  How perfect it was to spend an afternoon together with just the crunch of the rocks underfoot, and our steady, but not continuous, conversation.  We were certainly some of the youngest people on the trail, but often found ourselves stepping out of the way for the much older, much more seasoned locals.