1 Year of Wedded Bliss!

Hip, hip, hooray!  Today is our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!  This past year has been fantastic.  We have done so much and have truly been blessed beyond belief!

When talking about what to do for our first anniversary, Ryan suggested we take a honeymoon.  I reminded him that we did that and it's usually done right after the wedding.  He said it would be an anniversary honeymoon.  So Thursday we left town.

We drove to Pagosa Springs, Colorado on Thursday.  This was my suggestion.  When I suggested it, I thought it was a 2 hour drive.  Turns out it's more of a 6 hour drive!  (Those of you who know me well know how much I HATE driving!)  We left about 11 AM.  Ryan drove most of it and I read, talked his ear off, and snoozed.

We arrived about 6 PM.  We are staying at a studio apartment we found on Homeaway.com.  I first hear about this website when I went to Arizona with Ryan's family for Aunt Julie's wedding.  His mom had rented us a fantastic house through Home Away.  The apartment is great.  It's so close to everything!  We went and ate dinner at the Pagosa Brewery.

 When we got there we were told we couldn't order food yet because the kitchen was really backed up.  So we enjoyed some drinks and looked around and decided exactly what we wanted as we would be the first to order when the kitchen was open again.

We headed back to our cute little apartment and watched a little TV and sat on the porch.
Friday we planned a pretty relaxing, easy day.  We slept in and got up and headed to The Rose Restaurant for "brunch".  Our apartment was right downtown and we could walk to just about everything.  We walked from our brunch to The Springs Spa and Resort.  Once we got there we headed to the spa.  We had made reservations for the "Romance Package" [fancy words for a massage, with both of us in the same room].  It was a glorious 60 minutes!  As we were checking our we learned that our Spa package included vouchers for the hot springs!  Huzzah! The lady told us though that once we were there, if we left we were out of luck.  So we headed back to the apartment--stopping at the little shops along the way.  We hung out in the apartment for a little bit and eventually headed to Kips Mexican for some dinner.  After dinner we changed into our suits and walked back to the hot springs where we learned that we were VIP and we COULD have come and gone all day long.  Silly lady in the spa! 

 Also with our VIP-ness we got access to the five adult only pools!  (A $5 value per person!)  We stayed at the springs for about 2 hours.  Turns out it's a little bit boring......
   

  Saturday was our hiking day!  We left late and headed to Subway to have some lunch.  From there we went to Treasure Falls.  A 15 mile drive east of Pagosa Springs and a 1/2 mile hike once you get there.  

The hike was fairly simple, but I was a bit disappointed about how cold it was once we got to the top.  We couldn't get very close to the fall because the water was spraying us and it was cold.  We took a quick picture and then hiked back down

  After hiking Treasure Falls we headed to Sliver Falls.  We read that there might be water across the road in places.  Well we ran into some water but were able to easily cross it...until the very end.  It was there that we hit swiftly moving water that was pretty deep.  We figured we were pretty close to the Falls, but we weren't sure how close.  We contemplated taking our shoes off, crossing, putting them back on and then hiking until we found it.  However we were doubtful as to where we were going.  As we were turning around, a man in a red pickup was coming through the water.  He offered to take us to the falls.  We got in with him and found out that we were about 25 yards from the trailhead, but we didn't know we were that close...  I'm glad we got in with him, because it was BEAUTIFUL!

After Silver Falls we got back in the car to head to Opal Lake.  This was a longer hike--about 40 minutes in to get to the lake and then another 40 minutes out.  We hiked through the most amazing Aspen forest.  I had never seen Aspens so tall!  I took a ton of pictures of them!  They made the hike.  The lake was pretty, but I think the Aspens were more amazing.

After heading back to our apartment we ordered in some Pizza Hut and watched a lot of the Duggers on TLC!  It was great. :) 

Sunday we had planned to go look at the shops, walk around a bit and maybe go to the hot springs again at another place.  However it seems that everything is closed on Sundays.  So we walked around looking for the open shops and going in when we could.  It was much cooler on Sunday than it had been the other three days, so we headed back to the apartment for a Sunday afternoon nap.  GLORIOUS!  We got up and headed to Tequila's for dinner.  It was a nice.  We sat near the windows that overlooked the San Juan River as well as The Springs Spa and Resort. 

Today we packed up and headed home.  We arrived to find a dirty dog in our kitchen!  We quickly decided that El Tank-o needed a bath...bad!  We discussed whether or not we wanted to attempt to bathe him in our bathtub.  Then I remembered that sometimes they have bathe your own dog places. We found one, Bark N Wash.  We loaded Tank up in the car and headed over there.  He looked so sad and pathetic when he was all wet, but man, oh, man did he look so much more handsome when he was done.  When we got back home I also went to work sewing holes that our lovely fido friend put in his bed.  Three larger holes to be exact.  I restuffed one hole, because I thought there were only two, and then I found the third, but had already sewed the stuffing into what I thought was the biggest hole.  Oh well, he's sleeping in his bed now, so it must be okay.