Mid-Week Vaca!

 

Wednesday afternoon through Thursday afternoon of this week was a raging good time. :) On Wednesday evening, J and I went to the Rockies - White Sox game at Coors and sat in the upper infield area (as opposed to the upper outfield area where we normally chill) for some baseball. We also treated ourselves to some burgers, fries, rings, and cokes from the No. 17 Burger Shack (after Todd Helton). The Rockies didn't win that evening (but our appetites did).

Mariposa Lily

Some of the easily sloping landscape
along the side and to the bottom of the mountain.

J calls this the "egg white" flower
(we can't find it in the guide book)

 Thursday I had taken off to volunteer with J at JeffCo. We spent the morning helping with volunteer newsletters and we spent the afternoon at beautiful North Table Mountain. I think that this is quickly becoming one of my favorite parks because it is so different then many of the other landscapes in the area. Rather than being in a foothill region, North Table Mountain is "flat-topped mountain that rises almost 1,000 feet above the surrounding plains with very steep side slope" according to JeffCo's information page located here.
Especially fun right now were several wildflowers (and noxious weeds: bull thistle - not pictured) we saw along the trail.
We took a shorter hike than we were going to because the sky became dark and we saw rain in the distance. Good call because the sky opened up when we left!

Flowering Cactus

Impending gloomy weather and amazing view

The hike:

North Table Loop to Tilting Mesa Trail to North Table Loop.
Created by My Tracks on Android.
Total Distance: 5.73 km (3.6 mi)
Total Time: 1:43:30
Moving Time: 1:16:52
Average Speed: 3.32 km/h (2.1 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 4.47 km/h (2.8 mi/h)
Max Speed: 67.61 km/h (42.0 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 1692 m (5550 ft)
Max Elevation: 1991 m (6533 ft)
Elevation Gain: 236 m (774 ft)
Max Grade: 53 %
Min Grade: 1 %
Recorded: Thu Jun 30 13:02:18 MST 2011
Activity type: North Table Mountain

View 2011-06-30 13:02 in a larger map

Also, check out Clear Creek! This is the section raging right through Golden's city center. :)

Clear Creek at its finest