This weekend, Katie suggested that we go to the CSU trial gardens. I had gone about a month prior with little luck and she knew I wanted to go back for a real photoshoot so she suggested it. She drives by them a lot more frequently than I do and was inspired to get out her camera equipment and invite me to go. The weather was pretty hot, in the upper 90's, but we got there during a period where the was a little bit of cloud coverage which made the temperature drop a little, plus made for better shooting conditions.

Mike's Camera did it again. Another one of their too good to be true events where you get to rent camera equipment completely for free. So Katie and I made it a date to go and rent some ridiculously expensive equipment neither of us could afford and go shoot the Denver Botanical Gardens. I rented a Canon Mark IV and Katie got a Nikon D5. She won by overall expense ($6k vs $4.2k) but both the bodies we rented were still an order of magnitude more than either of our cameras. We rented out 2 different sets of lenses each, the first one were good macro lenses, the second set were good portrait lenses.

Unfortunately we didn't have a ton of time at the gardens, Katie had to work during in the morning and afternoon, but we still got 2 hours in of shooting which is always about close to my limit anyway for these events. We were both thinking another hour would have been perfect, but any time renting ridiculously expensive equipment is worth any time you can give it.

With my house selling on Monday, I pushed to get everything moved and the house cleaned by Friday so I could enjoy the weekend in Glenwood. Katie was working up in Glenwood on an externship the previous week and the week after, so I figured it would be a great way for me to relax after weeks of stress from trying to get everything packed and moved. Even though it was extra stressful a few days before the weekend, the added stress was well worth the relaxing that I was able to do over the weekend knowing that everything was done and that I could start finally living normally again.

On Saturday, we decided to go hike Hanging Lake. The weather was in the upper 60's, so we figured we would be okay without jackets, but we neglected that we were hiking along a river and the breeze with the cool water next to us made it feel like upper 50's. I think if it was 5-10 degrees warmer, that would have been a perfect hike, but other than that, it was a lovely and spectacular hike. The hike was almost 5.5 miles, including the walk from where the bus dropped us off to where the trail actually started. The climb was just barely over 1,000ft in elevation gain and the whole hike took us a little over 2 hours including a 30 minute break at the top.

Since Katie didn't have to work this week we decided to go on a little mini-vacation during the week up to Colorado Springs in hopes that we would find some fall colors. We packed as much of Colorado Springs as we could into the 2 days we were there including some of the touristy activities like going to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings and going to the Garden of the Gods. But mostly we picked that area for the scenic highway between Divide and Cripple Creek. There were several wonderful panoramic spots to see the fall colors, as well as some beautiful Aspen groves that we got up close to.

On Monday we went on a hike in Mueller State Park. We picked the Lost Pond hike which was short, just under 3 miles, and only 679ft of elevation gain. But since we were taking photos, it was an hour and a half long hike through the mountains. It ended up being a perfect place to shoot the aspens even though we were maybe a week too early for peak colors.