SURPRISE!

Oh if I could only tell you all of the things I orchestrated to pull this off...here are a few. 

Emailing the doc in Kyle's practice to undo one of the call requests he made for the month of May and ask for another instead. Kyle would have been mortified that I made a work request for him. 

Lies lies about the "party" happening that weekend. 

Asking his friends/family to lie about the party - Hey man, so excited about your party this weekend - see you there! 

Luckily he doesn't micromanage our credit card so I didn't have to lie about the hotel or flights (or ask someone else to make them which would have been the workaround). 

Lies about where/why the kids were gone Friday afternoon. 

So, finally, he gets home on Friday - his early off day - but much later than expected - close enough that I was about to have to call him and make up another lie to get him home, but I got a text saying our flight was delayed so he made it out in time for me to not to jeopardize the plan. 

He gets home, and I so nonchalantly tell him that a box of some of his fishing stuff came in from amazon. He opens it and its a book of hikes near Estes Park, boarding passes, and a fiction book for him to read on the plane (he never reads for fun anymore). This is his (posed) shocked face. Once he saw the boarding passes with that day's date on them he just kept saying, WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?

Couple of hours later, here we are at the airport - he's even sporting his ridiculous Made in 1976 t-shirt. I was so proud of him for packing so quickly (and even helping me) - this from the guy who likes to weigh every ounce of food. (That's why I planned a hotel and only day trips, so the stress of not being able to plan for weeks like he normally would for an overnight backpacking gig would not crush all the fun out of the surprise.)

We flew in late on Friday night, got our rental "anyone can take a reservation - but its the keeping that is the most important part." And drove to our cool B&B just on the edge of Estes Park - Tahara Mountain Lodge - which I now highly recommend.

We only had two days and I told Kyle we would do whatever he wanted with them.

So we hung out in a fly shop for a bit.

Drove in the park - up to the snow!

And did some good day-hikes. I honestly can't remember the first one much because the 2nd one was so cool.

My man making us some clean drinking water.

An Austin neighbor from EP gave us this local favorite off the tourist track for yummy dinner - they were right!

Hike Day #2: Bear Lake to Bierstadt Lake. We started at Bear Lake (which was frozen) by passing two old dudes with crampons (spikey snow shoes for ice climing) who referenced the last time they were at the base camp of Everest - for real. Most of the hike was through snow (in and out I guess) but really cool. We decided not to backtrack so were about 3 miles down the road from our car. So a-walking we went. Half-heartedly hitchhiking in the park, we actually got picked up by a nice couple from Florida (who said they pulled over because I was smiling so big - they thought we were joking). Winning. 

Bear Lake

Let's do this!

Right after I posed for this pick I post-holed up to my upperest possible thigh. Totally stuck. Kyle just laughed.

Our trail.

Bierstadt Lake - he tried to do some fishing here but no luck.

And I piddled around taking pictures or reading my kindle - it was a brilliant combo.

The views coming down were awesome - also, I've never taken more selfies in my life - not sure what that's about.

Aaaaaaaaand we're hitchhiking.

Some detail shots - but I'm not sure from which hike or drive - Kyle would know (but he's asleep).

An elk!

A (scrawny) MOOSE!

Signs to Odessa Lake - where we camped 10-ish years ago.

Mountain/lake reflections are the best.

Saying goodbye to Rocky Mountain National Park - hopefully it won't be ten years before we're back again!

Two days of fun. We had to get up in the 3s to drive back to Denver to catch our very early Monday morning flight so Kyle could be back and ready to go to work at 2pm but we did it! 

It's good for these two planners to get away "spontaneously" like this - okay, it was only spontaneous for one of us, but still. To another 40 years babe - I love you to pieces.

Happy Birthday. Hope you're okay with the fact that I surprised you with a trip instead of a big party. Or did I?