Colorado: Hanging out on Crystal Mountain

Rainbow Over Colorado

Photo above: My cousin's house on Crystal Mountain in Colorado.

I am lucky to have cousins in Colorado. I feel like I have a second home there. And each time I visit, I think about being out there a little more often. My cousin Erin and her family live in Boulder. My cousin Mara just moved to Denver with her husband. They are both great, fun, lovely people and so are their husbands. But my cousin Paul is who I spend the most time with, for better or worse. Usually better, rarely worse. He lives west of Ft. Collins with his wife and their two dogs. They are all siblings, well my cousins are, not the spouses or the dogs. They are from Ohio (my cousins, not the dogs though they visited and I think they liked it ok). Their house is near the Horsetooth Reservoir, right near the Poudre Valley, and I would argue that the area from La Porte west through the North Park basin along the Cache La Poudre is the best part of CO. Paul has great neighbors and great friends throughout Colorado. I can always count on being treated well and having a good time when I'm out there. An added bonus this past summer was spending some time up at his getaway on Crystal Mountain. We were at about 8500' elevation. Storms would form around us in the afternoon. The rainbow in the picture appeared between two of these storms. Mother Nature put on a show the whole time we were there. It was warm, cold, wet, dry but no matter what the weather was doing, it was peaceful . . . even when we were drinking . . . sort of, I suppose that might depend on your definition of peace but I thought it was peaceful (it probably helped being sheltered from some of those impressive thunderstorms). The pictures below give some of the great views found on the property.

Flowers were abundant all over the meadow and in the wooded areas.

Here is a view of his "cabin" from the Northeast. You can see two earlier structures on the left. Crystal Mountain is in the background.

Paul getting ready to hit the Tequila with me (actually I think we already were). This photo is posted without permission.

Here are two shots with Horsetooth Mountain in the distance. Ft. Collins is the white peak in the distance. Ft. Collins would be to the right of Horsetooth Mt.