There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist

I cannot even begin to tell you how much we enjoyed our little 3 day jaunt into Colorado.  I will try to let the pictures do it for me, with just a few interjections:) 

Here we all are, the first morning of our time in Estes Park.  After driving all day Monday and spending the night in our adorable, cozy little cabin, we roamed the streets of downtown Estes in search of...SALTWATER TAFFY!  (and fudge.  Mama likes her chocolate.)

Can you feel the intense excitement?!?  I love how old-fashioned the taffy shop felt.

After we had our sugar fix for the day, we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park for our first hiking experience.  I may just lump all the hiking pictures together in the next post as they are very pretty, but mostly self explanatory.  After the hike, we had dinner at the Estes Park Brewery and we had a little fire in our fire pit back at the cabin.  And then (and I'm almost embarrassed to say this) we watched season 5 of Dexter.  On our vacation, we spent approximately 5 hours watching Dexter.  We are completely hooked on that crazy murderer.  I aaaalmost thought I saw a tiny tear form in Brad's eye when the last episode ended.  Not because it was a sad episode, but because we don't have Showtime and therefore we will have to wait another year for season 6 to be on DVD.  Sorry, back to cute pictures of the kid.

The second morning in Estes (and last full day there) we started the day at a really nice little coffee shop called Kind Coffee.  If you're ever in Estes, you should caffeinate there.  They had really tasty bagel sandwiches and some seating, as you can see, just right along the rushing river!  It was so peaceful and just the most perfect way you could possibly start your day.  We spent quite awhile there, throwing rocks and sipping lattes.  After breakfast came more hiking.  A bit more hiking than we bargained for.  More on that later.  Once we had returned from hiking and had thawed and cleaned ourselves, we went out for a very nice dinner, complete with martinis.  A quick clean-up of the cabin ended our last night in Estes.  It was perfection...Thursday morning we were up bright and early for the trip into Denver for our Ikea fix.  A bit more Ikea than we bargained for.  More on that later, too.

Although our trip was short, it was so great to have just a few days with no schedule to follow, very little cell phone reception, no alarm clocks and 24 hour a day Willa access.  It made the trip even more enjoyable that we stayed in a cabin that was completely stocked with everything we needed so that we could cook a few meals ourselves and not pack a bunch of extras.  And having plenty of cash saved up, just for the purpose of vacation, so that we didn't feel guilty about spending a little money on ourselves.  What a great way to celebrate our 5th anniversary and our little family.