Wisconsin Road Trip Day 4

Note: Day 4 was probably my favorite day of the whole trip so I'm dedicating an entire post to it. 

Before leaving Parachute, we got new wiper blades which made me feel exponentially better about driving through potential thunderstorms. While Emily was across the street at the mechanic, Linnea and I planned what we thought would be a short one mile hike in Glenwood Springs, CO at Hanging Lake.

View from the parking lot. It was gorgeous! 

L taking photos again :) 

We got to the trail head and realized that the hike which we thought would take us no more than an hour, was actually all uphill on some uneven terrain. We started the hike, and quickly my head really started bothering me. I get bad migraines fairly frequently so I tried to push through it, but at the half mile mark I had this incredibly intense pain in my temple and I started to feel sick. I didn't want to hold my friends back so I just took a seat and decided to wait for them.

Subtle selfies on the side of the trail

I started to get a little bit worried when one of the other hikers who had gone up right after E&L came back down the trail. It started to drizzle and my head wasn't hurting so badly anymore so I decided to keep walking. Less than 10 minutes after that drizzle it started to POUR. The trail was quickly turning into a river. I finally found the girls and at that point everyone was making a mad dash back to the parking lot. It was quite the adventure!

And of course it stopped raining as soon as we got back to the car.

Colorado was by far our favorite state, so we wanted to spend as much time there as possible. We stopped at a visitor center in Vail, CO to find out if there were any short trails in the area, but when we got out of the car we were greeted by a huge boom of thunder. We scrapped the hiking plan and decided to head to the AlpenRose for an early dinner. Emily went to move the car while Linnea and I got caught up in a freak hail storm. For a California kid, all these crazy weather conditions were really keeping me on my toes.

So much rain! 

Crazy, crazy hail. I thought it was gonna snow!

Cheese plate at the AlpenRose

Käse schnitzel 

Totally can't remember what this is called but Linnea said she's had it several times with her boyfriend's German family.

The whole trip we really wanted to see a moose or a buffalo... this was the closest we got.

We spent our second night close to the border of Nebraska so we could embark on our longest day of driving the next morning.

Part 3, coming up next!