An amazing hike in Aspen

Doesn't this look like a postcard?!?

On Sunday morning we took a hike at the Maroon Bells. It was an unbelievable hike - breathtakingly gorgeous. There is little parking by the Bells, so unless you go really early, you need to take a bus. But the nice concierge at our hotel told us of a convenient little loophole. If you take a baby or small child in a carseat, you can go anytime! So we took Katie and cousin Susan and cousins Bernie and Rachel took Ariel in her carseat and Kara's aunt Miriam and we had a wonderful morning together in the spectacular scenery. Katie was in her backpack and Ariel was in her's and they were both so cute. There were wild raspberries on the trail which we all enjoyed.

We hiked up to a little lake where we had a snack and then it started raining. We had raingear and Katie's backpack has a cute little rain shield. She was so content, she even fell asleep on the way down!

Here's the view on the way down

And a grove of aspens. In case you don't know, aspens reproduce asexually so that a grove of trees is actually one huge organism - acres of roots underneath the soil and each tree trunk is a genetic clone of one another in the organism. Hmm - interesting stuff even if I never thought I'd write about plant biology in a blog...