freedom day and a twofer

Happy Independence Day weekend!  I guess many Americans are already celebrating.  It's always a bit "inconvenient" when the fourth falls in the middle of the week, but we should be grateful for the holiday.

My summer tutee is a college woman who is from a country other than the U.S.  We were looking over our schedules for this coming week, and noted we couldn't meet on Tuesday.

"Oh yeah, it's "Freedon Day", or what is it?" , she said.

"Independence Day", I answered (knowledgeable tutor that I am...)

"Oh, right", she replied, "We don't have that in my country!", she said with a laugh.  She, in fact, is a quite strongly opinionated and independent woman and certainly knows what the holiday stands for even if she gets the name wrong.  It's safe to say she likes living here.

And I like living here too!  So thanks to those rebels who got the ball rolling on that one.

Speaking of the good life, Chaco and I made another trek to the mountains yesterday.  I know of a few people, mostly younger than I am, who just love climbing the state's 14ers whenever they get a chance.  Now I think I'm starting to understand the "addiction".

Yesterday we enjoyed a beautiful hike up Gray's Peak and then shuffled on over to Torrey's Peak before descending back down again.  This is a popular route, known as "Gray's and Torrey's", which allows climbers to bag two lovely 14ers in one triangular day hike.

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Gray's Peak on the left, Torrey's on the right

This is an extremely popular hike, and if we'd had our act together, we probably would've driven up the night before and camped.  But it was really a Friday evening spur of the moment decision, and at least we had our act together enough to leave in the wee hours of Saturday morning and make good time to the trail head.

Despite the crowds, we both really enjoyed this hike.  Plus, the other hikers were all very friendly. I went passed a little boy with the smallest pair of YakTrax I've ever seen strapped to his little backpack.  Precious!

Behind Chaco, heading up to Gray's Peak

I really enjoyed the views and variety of terrain.  It was very rocky for good portions of the climb compared to Mt. Elbert.  We also enjoyed some snowy areas, but they either weren't as bad as Elbert or I'm starting to like them.  We did encounter a couple of hikers who were a bit freaked out by the snow and thus held up the hikers behind them a bit.  I didn't mind since I could sympathize with them, and I was just happy that I wasn't the freaked out one.