Pence Park, Hiking in Kittridge Colorado -- Where does this trail go?

Pence Park is not a well known park within the Denver Mountain Park System, but it connects to the Bear Creek Trail and is often used by mountain bikers now that the trail system connects from Pence Park to Lair O' The Bear, approximately 12 miles, the trail continues through Corwina Park as well, making it a shorter hike/bike if desired.  
I arrived at the park back in July when I first hiked this trail with Magnolia, the parking lot was empty and we went the opposite direction of the Lair O' The Bear Trail, it took us up into the woods and the trail was quite steep.  At one point it became so very steep that I decided it wasn't the safest idea carrying Magnolia on the front of me in the Ergo, so we turned around, went back to the parking lot and hiked down the Lair O' The Bear trail (another post on that hike to come).  I decided to go back to Pence Park with my husband because I just needed to know where the trail went!  

Getting out of the house, a Green Mountain Hike

Today is a day that I feel more like a mother than anything else.  A mama who is trying to work from home, part-time, while taking care of a very high energy baby who demands my time and protests loudly when she doesn't get what she wants.  Its hard.  I struggle.  
This week has been particularly hard, you can read more about that here if you'd like, but Magnolia is cutting a couple of teeth and when she is in pain, she just screams constantly despite whatever I try to do to give her relief.  Today, after a morning full of no naps and cranky-ness, I decided we needed to get out of the house; I grabbed the ergo and filled my camelback with some water and we jumped in the car to go to Green Mountain to find a trail.  
I had planned on hiking at a different trail, one that you can find on my blog here, but I missed my turn and ended up at the same trail that I hiked just days before Magnolia was born last November.  
When we first started hiking, Magnolia was very happy and we happily walked along, talked about the trees and birds, and she babbled about how much teething really hurts.  Of course, the happy mood didn't last long and soon she was fussing and squirming in the carrier, which quickly escalated into screaming.  We stopped and had a snack, which helped some, but eventually I had to put her back in the carrier so that we could hike back to the car.  She fussed and babbled throughout the hike back and even though her mood didn't really change, mine did.  I was able to get outside, do something that I like, and teach my child a little bit about nature in the process.   

Gary R. McDonnell Park, Lakewood Colorado, Playground with lots more

I've been visiting more parks than I normally would, now that Magnolia is here and at that age where she enjoys the playground a lot.  I grew up in Michigan, and there weren't any playgrounds near our house, you just had a swingset in your yard; and here in Colorado there is so much public space to enjoy and I would have loved this when I was a child.   However, I did have an amazing tree swing that my dad built, but no slide, rock wall, tree house, and more.   This park is well hidden from the road and probably wouldn't be found by someone who didn't know it was there.  

Hiking at Diamond Lake Trailhead, Indian Peaks Wilderness, Eldora Colorado

Buy this as an art print here

This weekend I really wanted to get out into the mountains with Josh, Magnolia and the dogs to see the fall colors, and I decided that we should hike the Diamond Lake trailhead outside of Eldora, Colorado.  This was a trail that Josh had mentioned he'd like to hike after I had hiked it solo back in 2010, you can see the report here.  At that time I hiked all the way to Diamond Lake and beyond.    Yesterday however, we only made it to the large falls with our whole family of hikers, baby and dogs, also both Josh and I have been feeling under the weather and that was plenty far enough for us on this day.  Even with only going about 2-3 miles round trip, the hike still took over 3 hours, we did stop often so that I could take pictures, we hiked slowly because we had Rock with us, our 14 year old dog, and Magnolia was pretty squirmy, so it we often had to attend to her needs.  We managed to loose another pacifier on the trail, but otherwise had a great afternoon.  The trailhead parking lot was completely packed and the trail was very busy.  

Box Canyon Trail, Vedauwoo Wyoming, Rock Climbing and Scrambling

I'm still trying to catch up from two weekends at Vedauwoo, Wyoming in the Medicine Bow Mountains between Laramie and Cheyenne off I-80; there were tons of trails to write about and great camping too.  Check out my previous posts about the Turtle Rock trail here and the Vedauwoo campground here.  When hiking the Turtle Rock Trail a few weeks ago, we mistakenly thought it would take us to the top of the rock formations, however, the Box Canyon Trail does continue up the rock formations and we spent the day climbing, scrambling and hiking up the amazing and unique rock formations.