Our 10 Year Anniversary Trip to Grand Lake, CO

A decade! That's how long we've been married. Not counting the 7 years we dated. That's a long time! We knew we wanted to do something bigger than just a dinner out and a babysitter so we looked into taking a trip that would be fun for all three of us but also somewhat close, so travel wouldn't eat up our time or make Lachlan (and therefore, us) miserable. We choose to visit Grand Lake, which is about 2 hours away. It's a great family-friendly place to camp, but we stayed in a super cute lodge.

We left on Friday morning after dropping the dogs off at their own doggie daycare vacation (they totally deserved it after being so bored at our house these last few months), and not even 40 minutes into the drive, Lachlan started screaming (from a sore diaper rash that hurt after he had just pooped), and his scream was so loud it hurt his throat, and therefore with his super sensitive gag reflex, he puked. And puked, and puked, and puked. He couldn't have been more covered in puke if we had dumped a bucket of puke on him. We found the nearest exit and pulled over to clean the mess, only armed with baby wipes, one burp cloth, and fresh clothes. Guess I'll be bringing paper towels everywhere now!

After the puke-pocolypse, we made it to Grand Lake in decent time. Our room wasn't ready yet so we walked down to the little beach and Lachlan enjoyed digging in the sand. After a while, we went into some of the cute little shops in town, grabbed some dinner to go, and checked into our lodge.

We crossed our fingers SO hard when it was bedtime. If you remember, the last time we took a trip (to Santa Fe, NM), Lachlan screamed his face off the entire night in the hotel and we got maybe 3 hours of sleep. It was worse than when he was a newborn. So this time, we made sure that wherever we stayed, had two rooms so he could be in his own and NOT SEE US. That was the key. So we put him in the living room while we slept in the bedroom. And just hung out on the porch bench drinking beer outside our room until we were ready to go to bed. It worked out great and we were so thankful that Lachlan slept in his pack n play without issue! This restored my hope in taking future trips. Because believe me, there's SO many places we wanna explore in Colorado!

During our 3 days in Grand Lake, we hiked through Adam's Falls where we saw the most GORGEOUS meadow, we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park and made a few stops at the easy trails, drove up to some 12,000 feet elevation (which didn't feel so great, my head felt light and my eyes were kind of fuzzy - basically it felt like having anxiety!), we saw the continental divide, an Elk on the way back down, and we hiked a little of the Monarch Trail before we headed home on Sunday.

We did manage to eat out at a restaurant ONCE and once was more than enough. We still can't do restaurants with Lachlan, so we did ordered pick-up all the other times. But at that one restaurant, there was a large family eating outside next to us and the mom of the family was super nice to us, talking to me about how to not give any fucks about the noise my kid makes, and how some people are too uptight, just to let kids be kids. I really appreciated her understanding and coolness about my whining yelling kid, but I kept thinking, I have SO many fucks to give! I wish I didn't but I do and it makes eating out miserable for me.

Anyhow... we had a GREAT time, saw so many beautiful sights. Plus, I got a sweet tan. I can't wait for our next trip!

Here's some of my favorite pics from Grand Lake and our hikes: