Keystone, Colorado - Day 5

Day five started a little slow for us as we were pretty sore after a couple tough days of serious activity! Sarah and Meghan headed out bright and early to hike Quandary Peak while the rest of us decided to take it easy or so I thought. When you vacation with Jim it's not necessarily the type of vacation where you sit on your butt, I tend to do more activity on vacation than I do when I'm at home. I always thought I was in relatively good shape when I am on vacation I feel like completely out of shape! So the easy part of our hike was Lily Pad. This hike is great for any ages and size as it's easy and there is little elevation change and roughly 3.2 miles roundtrip.  

And up we go!

The beautiful lily pads

Jim decided since we were right next door to Buffalo Mountain we should check it out as we had heard good things about the trail and views. We had talked to a few older guys on the Lily Pad trail who claimed the first mile of the trail was very difficult but the rest wasn't too bad. The six of us walked the short distance from Lily Pad to the Buffalo Mountain trail head and started out on our next adventure.

If I had done any research about Buffalo Mountain I would've probably recommended that we find a different trail as it is considered advanced. Considering Megan, Brian and Vogs has arrived the night before it probably wasn't the best trail to pick considering the elevation change was approximately 3,000 feet. The first mile was pretty easy and flat which made all of us scratch our head as the guys we ran into earlier noted how difficult the first mile was. We should've know that it wasn't the first mile but the last mile!

Considering I had pushed my legs and lungs to all ends the last two days I was not overly excited about embarking a difficult trail. My legs were like jell-o and not in shape to hike for a long period of time but Jim wanted to see what this trail was all about so away we went. Unfortunately we sadly didn't get all the way to the top as the last part of the hike was pretty much rock climbing... I knew there was no way my body could handle rock climbing and then getting myself back down the mountain so we turned around. We heard the views were amazing and I can only imagine consider what they were like when we decided to turn around.

Excited we are almost to the end!!

As a treat after our hard work we all headed out for sushi - I know you're thinking sushi in the middle of the mountains?! We made reservations for 9 at Nozawa Sushi and Teppanyaki but arrived to find they weren't really ready for us... a little frustrating but eventually they found us a table as the place was extremely busy and for a good reason. The sushi was amazing and the portion sizes were huge! So after stuffing our bellies with sushi and beers after a full day of activity we were all ready for bed.