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My trip was amazing and exactly what I needed. I had come to the point where every shreik or attitude jab or dust bunny was about to drive me over the edge and I literally thank God I was able to go.

Sarah and I stayed our first night at Swiftcurrent Lodge in Estes Park. Our adorable little cabin (actually three-plex of cabins) was inches away from the bank of the river. We slept to the sound of the river bubbling along and unfortunately the cars driving on the highway right by our window. Where the were going we have no clue, the road was a dead end. The traffic finally died down after about midnight. We signed up for a slot to use the hot tub that also sat on the bank of the river. In fact, we were the only ones to sign up at all...both nights! Who wouldn't love sitting in the hot tub as the sun sets on the river, the cold night air sinks in and as you relax in the bubbles you glance around every few minutes checking to make sure a mountain lion or bear hasn't decided to join you. Freaking awesome, I say.

Funny (in each sense of the word) things about this lodge...

1. Rules...rules...everywhere! Every room had new rules posted. Every rule had a fee as a punishment. I felt like we were staying a couple of nights at a communist retreat! Basically it boils down to this...for every rule you screwed up...$25 to your credit card.

2. The beds...couldn't get the matress to budge. These beds were so firm we ran and jumped on them and I barely felt them give at all. We both had massive mattress hangovers both mornings we woke up. Motrin was our friend.

3. The complimentary shampoo and conditioner was below even dollar store quality...yet our bathrooms both nights had a free Schick Quatro razor! These are almost $10 in a drug store, yet they can't even give us Breck or Prell for shampoo at least? Messed up...

4. With my new uber-short hair-do everyone gave us looks that reeked of "woah...look at that lesbian couple staying in cabin #1". "Yeah...I'm the dude" became our inside joke catch phrase we'd whisper to each other with every freakish stare. Flipping hilarious! Can't even begin to describe how much fun we had with that one and how bad our sides hurt from laughing about it.

Anyway, the river and the screaming yellow aspens, the smelly blue spruces and the quaint bank-side porch swings made up for it all.

Hiking...hiking in RMNP was killer....almost literally. We hiked Bear Lake, easy peesy. Less than a mile around the lake, but with breathtaking views and crystal clear water. We were at about 10,000 feet. We came down and went back up a diferent way to Nymph Lake. A more difficult grade on the trail, and Sarah thought she was going to need an oxygen tank, but we made it. The lake was covered in lily pads and surrounded by pines stacked on top of pines with rocky outcrops popping out at the top. From here we could see the top of the snowy peaks. We wanted to keep going, but in fear of Sarah dying from an asthma attack we decided to eat p.b. and jelly sandwhiches we brought to make and just hang out for a while. We were casually stalked by an obese grey squirrel, who particularly liked to sit right behind me and drill holes in my back by staring me down. We were good little hikers and didn't give in by sharing. "Don't feed the wildlife" is posted every three and one quarter inches on signs around there.

Oh, forgot to mention...at Nymph Lake, we walked off the trail (big mistake) to go around the lake. Sarah was a little way in front of me and started flipping out, demanding I "get over here and look at this!". Yup...an enormous mountain lion print in the mud on the shore...fresh... we may have set the record for hiking pace while we booked it back to the trail, any minute expecting to have an overgrown, hungry cat land on one of our backs from a tree limb.

There was so much more, it would take a novel to write, but this sums up some of the most exciting things. Shopping around Estes, renting a DVD player to watch movies the second night, eating delicious pizza on the bank of the river while reading a real estate magazine and being asked by the waitress if we were thinking about buying (yup...i'm the dude), eating homemade ice cream, driving through a "controlled" burn in RMNP that, by the way, looked OUT of control to me, and spotting a male elk waiting for a hottie to walk by and make babies with are just a sprinkling of the rest of our weekend. I'll make my pictures a separate post...if you're even still reading at this point.