What kind of shoes should you wear on Rabbit Mountain?

A really wonderful thing about this 3 day walk, is it has me up, out and about everywhere I go! This time on our Denver trip, we dodged the rain and headed north to Rabbit Mountain Open Space outside of Lyons Colorado.

The location was selected when Allison asked online for a good, dog friendly hike, somewhat near to Denver. The trail head was about 45 miles from Denver. (No we didn't walk there!)

The geology and history of the area is fascinating. From what I recall this area at one time was a tropic forest with an abundance of dinosaurs. The plains hit the Rocky Mountains and the continental divide is formed. The area seems to be made of sandstone/flagstone. There aren't a whole lot of trees, although there were some small pinon type trees ... let's call them scrub pines. As we walked up to the trail there were dozens of prairie dogs chirping to each other. If you didn't notice it was them, you would have been searching the sky for the bird who was calling out so incessantly.

It had rained lately, and was still raining in Denver when we began the walk. The red soil was muddy, and horses who had been on the trail had made the dirt even more muddy. I looked at my shoes, Allison's boot and Glenn's shoes and determined, it didn't make a difference which shoes you wore in this stuff, eventually we all would be carrying another couple of pounds of mud on the bottom of our shoes. This made walking more difficult. Between dodging the most copious of mud puddles and gingerly avoiding the loose stones along the path, I found my head down and my eyes to the ground for most of this 7.6 mile walk.

Take a look at some of the photos I shot on the hike.

Despite the cloudy skies, it was a glorious day.

The trail was full of surprises. The biggest might have been three llamas being led up the trail. We were on a lookout trail and we never thought we had to look out for llamas! Dexter was sitting on a bench with Allison when they turned the corner. I would say the nerves were high both on the bench and the trail as they stared each other down. I thought good thing it wasn't our dogs with us...they would have spooked those animals for sure. Instead, after the stare down...they headed on their way.

Can't really tell from here, but that's about a 1000 foot drop off on the other side.

Did I say this trail was muddy?!

And beautiful too.

Cactus

Hey, what cause all these rocks to tumble down the hill in such an organized fashion?

Flora

In the big picture... we're pretty little.

The path

There's a whole heck of a lot of water underground here. They bring it all the way to Denver.

At the end of the day, Dexter could have still gone for miles. He is a definite trooper. Glenn's feet had failed him, Allison seemed to be tired but doing great, I was STARVING!

We ended our day by Allison introducing me to Guitar Hero.... GOING FOR IT

Not that long ago I would have thought this would have been an impossible day. I would have had my excuses lined up so I wouldn't have to go out there only to find out I could'nt keep up with Glenn and Allison. This time, they were on the trail for me. They knew I wanted to go somewhere. A couple of moments on the trail I saw myself doing some "feat" and being pretty darn proud of what I was doing.

The lookout we had walked to hung suspended above the valley below at least 1000 feet (probably more). The stone ledges had crevices between them that were 3 feet wide and 10 feet deep. There would have been no way I would have crossed those crevices last year. But I took a look and took my time and planned my attack until I just WENT for it! That is a big difference over the Cathy I was, versus the Cathy I am becoming. I am going for it!

And you know what you get when you do cross those scary crevices you face day to day? You get more and more confidence in yourself. You are able to approach the next task with the knowledge that you, you are the kind of person who goes for it. Nothing will get in your way. Nothing will stop you now. What a gift you are given when you take that leap of faith.

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