Two Days, Two Hikes, Two Temples

Scott and I recently took a quick trip to Colorado. We haven't taken a trip with just the two of us since we went to Alaska in the summer of 2019 so we decided it was time.

We left early Tuesday morning and flew to Denver. By the time we got our rental car, it was about 11:30. We drove to Fort Collins which is about an hour from Denver and found a little trail near the highway called Arapaho Bend Natural Area. You get some traffic noise there but it was a nice walk and pleasant weather. We walked about 3 miles.

Our main reason to be in Fort Collins was to visit the temple there. It's a newer temple built in 2016 and quite lovely. We had an appointment at 2:45 for an endowment session. It was good to be there.

After the temple we found the restaurant where we were meeting a colleague of Scott's and his wife for dinner. Their names were Jake and Sarah Roberts and we enjoyed getting to know them. Scott knew them but I had never met them. After dinner, we drove to Denver and found the hotel where we were staying.

On Wednesday morning, we had an appointment at the Denver Temple at 9am for an endowment session. The Denver Temple is older, built in 1986. The temple workers were very welcoming and gracious.

It was a colder day and Scott decided he needed a hat to be happy while we were hiking. So we visited Target for a hat and then Sprouts for some food before heading to Roxborough State Park where we went on a hike.

There were some very interesting rock formations at that park that these pictures don't really show very well.

After our hike we headed back to the airport to come home. We loved our time together without the usual outside pressures and enjoyed just being a couple again. We want to do it again sometime soon.

Comments

Visiting Susquehanna: The Priesthood Restoration Site

On our way home from Palmyra, we decided to go a couple of hours out of our way to visit the recently opened Priesthood Restoration Site along the Susquehanna River. This is where we believe that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist which gave them the authority to baptize. This site also has the restored Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home where Joseph and Emma lived for a year as well as the home where Joseph and Emma lived on their own. We spent a couple of hours there and I wouldn't have minded a few more minutes but we had a long way to go that night. It's a beautiful setting, very much in rural Pennsylvania. However, on the day we were there, cars at a racetrack nearby were detracting from the peace and quiet. I'm guessing that's not as big of a problem on weekdays. The Hale Family was quite well-off for their day so their home was probably nicely decorated with wallpaper and carpet. ...

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This is a juvenile fiction book about a young girl named Melody with severe cerebral palsy. Her body doesn't allow her to feed herself, speak, or do much at all. She's very intelligent with a photographic memory but she can't really communicate. Finally, in 5th grade, she gets a "Medi-Talker" which is a computer that speaks what she types in. Finally she has a voice. This book explores what it is like to be severely physically disabled but not mentally disabled. It seems like one of the most frustrating of all scenarios. She is completely aware of all the cruelty (subtle and otherwise) that her classmates inflict on her because they don't really want to include her in their activities. One of the saddest moments in the book comes when she realizes that every one of her special ed classmates is kind, where the "normal" ones are not. Who really has the worse disability? The book was a quick read and fairly enjoyable. Wha...

Nauvoo Pageant!

I have been a negligent blogger this last month. My reason is that we have been super busy. At the end of July, we went to the Nauvoo Pageant. We were able to participate once again in the Gold Cast like we did in 2007 and 2014. We picked up our daughter at the end of her cross country camp in Price, Utah on our way out of town. Then we drove to our friends' house in Golden, Colorado near Denver to stay the night. It was fun to reconnect if only briefly. The next night we were in Lawrence, Kansas, visiting my brother and sister-in-law and their family. That was also fun but short. We left the next morning, attending nearby church before taking off. We arrived in Nauvoo around 4pm with just enough time to have dinner at our cabin before going to our orientation at the pageant building. The next day we went to the pageant building to get our costumes and to learn how to do our hair in the 1840 styles. ...

Search This Blog