September | 2023

Summer of 2023 officially ends on Sept 23. I always feel a bit sad as summer ends, though I love fall colors. Summer for me is vacation season, and camping season, and the season for carefree evenings on the deck.

I went bike riding with my ten-year-old last Sunday and it was a really nice time. Just us, enjoying father-son time. Life has gotten much busier, more serious, and at times extra stressful. It’s times like these that count the most.

The prior day we went to a farm to go apple picking but found out when we were there that the apple picking was by reservation only and we had no reservations. I looked at the trees and realized there weren’t many (if any) apples left on the trees to pick. It could have been disappointing, but we made the best of it and wandered through a flower garden. That’s when I took this picture of a painted lady butterfly.

We went to a really nice park in Lyons that we had gone to the day before for my son’s cross country meet. It was pleasant and pretty. Had the meet not been there we never would have gone there. We only ever drove right through Lyons to get to Estes Park all these years. But now I’m sure we’ll be back.

My point…well… days go by and you just need to enjoy the moment for what it is. Life is unnecessarily competitive these days, unnecessarily rushed, and unnecessarily stressful.

When I think back to summer of 2023 I’ll have a mixture of memories. I wish we could have done more. I sometimes feel an endless need to do more, to achieve more. Just enjoying time with the family is what counts. And noticing things like this butterfly on a flower.

I have a new hike to add to my list of The Greatest Day Hikes in the USA. The DeCaLiBron Loop is a 7.6 mile hike that leads to the summits of four of Colorado’s 14er mountains. The trailhead is located at Kite Lake, which is up a 4-wheel drive road from Fairplay, CO.

7.6 miles isn’t usually that difficult, but the elevation changes as you summit one mountain, descend and reascend the next one make it challenging. My teenage son and I were both pretty tired after completing the hike.

You can complete the hike in either direction, starting with Mount Democrat, then continuing to Mount Cameron, Mount Lincoln, and finally Mount Bross. Or you can do them in reverse, as we did. I don’t think there is an advantage in going in either direction, but the scenery might be better going in the reverse direction.

There are a couple things to know in advance before starting this hike. The first is that once you start it and advance past the first summit there is no quick return to the trailhead. Thus you must keep an eye on the weather and start early to avoid afternoon thunderstorms. We saw people arriving at 10AM and hopefully they weren’t trying to hike more than one mountain.

The other thing to know is the trail and the mountains themselves are on private land. Because of a recent lawsuit private landowners are reluctant to allow the public to use trails on their land. Fortunately the landowner is allowing the public to use the trail as long as they complete this online form the day of the hike: https://waiver.smartwaiver.com/w/c2d3wpisftzvbznpjhsbnb/kiosk/ .

My son and I battled through the wind and cold, the altitude, steep terrain and later the heat and loose rocks to complete the loop. Overall it’s something to be proud of once you finish it.

I included a video of our hike below the gallery.