Lovell Gulch Trail

On Saturday, Matt and I went on a hike with our friends from our small group, Gary & Allison. We consulted Allison's trail book and decided on Lovell Gulch Trail in Woodland Park. We did the loop that was just over 5 miles. We thought this would be better than the original one we were planning on since Matt's knee has been bothering him lately (especially after Ultimate Frisbee on Tuesday night!)

He we are getting situated at the trail head.

Heading up!

Colorado's state flower: Rocky Mountain Columbine

View of Pike's Peak (the backside)

Chatting during a break.

Group Shot!

Setting up another group shot. Ingenious...hanging the camera from a tree!

My camera didn't hang right, so we had to kind of set it there. Note the branches!

Whoops! So, we were doing so great. And were probably less than a 1/4 mile from the trail head on our way back. And somehow (there is still a debate as to whose fault it was!) we took a wrong turn on 1 out of 2 Y's on our trail. We were all gabbing away and weren't paying attention!

So when we realized things didn't look familiar, we started taking more turns, until we ended up in a neighborhood! Thankfully for me, we found a portapotty at a park! And we also encountered an Estate Sale along the way that we meandered through. We asked for directions to a school we thought was by the trail head and moved on in that direction. Unfortunately, we got directions to the wrong school and were heading farther and farther away from our destination! We then see this row of shops (which are all closed by the way)and asked this random guy who was taking a nap in his vehicle in the parking lot for directions.

Matt waiting patiently at the shops :)

Well, we still were struggling. The guy in the car didn't know his way around very well and we decided to take a gander at Allison's trail map after walking a few blocks down the road. We hoped it would shed some new light on our journey.

Then we got smart and found an address on a nearby house and Gary GoogleTexted on his phone and we received directions to the trail head. A mere 2 miles away! By this time we had already walked 2-3 miles out of our way. ha ha.

After taking a look at the looming clouds and remembering the promise of rain on the afternoon forecast...

...we came to a group decision to visit the Police Station across the road...

...and hitch a ride!!!!!

Ha ha. Yep, the four of us crawled into the back of this police car, and he drove us to our trail head. What an experience!

And of course, the picture documentation of the trail we hiked.

Although, I'm pretty sure we don't need the pictures to remember this one!

We were famished and headed to Woodland Park's main street to eat at a cute deli! There was a ton of stuff going on in town with ice cream, root beer and hot dog stands all along the road. Plus, (Clayton & Tawny are you reading this?) we found The Donut Mill that sells Blue Bell ice cream!! Clayton's favorite. Not too shabby on the taste buds if we do say so ourselves! Yumm!!