Glenwood Springs

After totally scoring and having the most incredible day hiking Hanging Lake, the forecast continued to get scarier and scarier. Would we ever make it home? Would we make it home alive? 10-20 inches of snow is nothing to sneeze at.

So, we went to sleep not knowing what the morning would look like.

Lucky for us, when we woke up the forecast had switched from snow to rain.

HALLELUJAH!!!!

We headed to the hot springs- the most famous hot springs in Colorado that has been opened since 1890.

It was WAY more fun than we could have anticipated! They have two pools- my favorite, where the temp is at 104, and the main pool which is a cool 94. I could stay the 104 pool all day long! I don't care if I get baked- it feels so good!

Here is Camille- she went off the diving board over 25 times! She started doing tricks and everything- it was really cute.

Audra is much more cautious. She basically kept just walking straight off.

After a couple hours we got changed and headed up to the Glenwood Canyon Adventure Park. This is an amusement park and cave tours on top of the mountain. It was so cool!

 We took a gondola ride to the top of the mountain. Camille looks excited, but she was very scared

 The amusement park is built around these caves. In fact, the owner of the caves didn't want too add an amusement park, but his friends convinced him it would help them get more customers. The rides are incredible- if you are a daredevil, which I am not. Things like sling shots over the edge of a mountain and such.

But, really, what we cared about were the caves. Caves are Ben's favorite thing in the world. I knew if we went to caves, there was a much greater likelihood of Ben having a good time.

The caves were really, really cool!

 There are two caves. One of them takes you out to a cliff with incredible views. Too bad the clouds obscured our view a little bit.

We decided to do one ride- the Alpine Slide. Camille went with me, and the entire time she was screaming, "I HATE THIS SLIDE! I HATE THIS SLIDE!" Can you tell? Of course, later she told me she wanted to do it again.

I highly recommend the alpine slide! It was so much fun- even with a screaming child on my lap.

On the ride is a picture of us going back up the slide- you go down and it really isn't very steep, but then they pull you straight up the mountain at the end, which isn't scary at all.

Audra and Claire stayed later with our friends. They went back to the pool for some more fun before headed home.

But, Ben wanted to head back to hopefully beat the snow- which we did. The roads were slightly icy, but really they were fine- it was truly a miracle!

When we got in the car to come home, completely unprompted, Ben turned to me and said, "Amazingly, this actually turned out to be a great trip!" I don't know if this video will work or not, but I made Ben repeat it so I could record it:

We truly had no idea what to expect since the weather predictions were so horrible. But, we were truly blessed and an absolutely wonderful time!!!

Now, on to our next trip!