It's been a little while since we've gone hiking. Between visiting family, hosting a birthday party, and getting our garden ready for the spring, we haven't had much time to hike. The plan was to go deep into the mountains this weekend to find a great snowshoe, but with the weather perfect in town, we decided to go somewhere a little closer. By doing something closer, we were able to enjoy the great outdoors both in the mountains and in town.

The hike this weekend was to Lilly Mountain, which starts outside of Estes Park. We were at a low elevation so there was very minimal snow, but enough that we needed our spikes to make it up a few steep sections. The weather was nice, but it was a little windy. Despite the wind, I was hiking in a tee shirt the entire time and only put on a jacket at the summit. Overall, it was a great hike!

Around midnight leading into March 14th the moon was eclipsed by Earth's shadow. I woke up a little before midnight and spent an hour watching it happen. By the time the moon was in full totality, the clouds were too substantial to see much, which was unfortunate to not see the coolest part. But it was neat to watch the alignment happen.

A day after the lunar eclipse, the moon was perfectly lined up to set behind Longs Peak and Mount Meeker during golden hour in the morning. The forecast called for it to be overcast, but luckily there was a sliver of sky above the mountains that wasn't cloudy.

We had a small window of time to go hiking this weekend. It was raining when we woke up on Saturday morning and there was rain forecasted in the early afternoon. Since the weather didn't look that great, we decided to go into Boulder to hike in Chautauqua Park. Chautauqua is a gorgeous area but usually packed with people making parking difficult and an overall decrease in hiking experience due to the crowds. But we were hoping with the weather not looking great that would deter people from getting outdoors. And it did! We got to Chautauqua a little after 9 and there was still plenty of parking.

We threw on our packs and headed to Royal Arch, a hike we've done several times before. This is a difficult hike but relatively short. It's difficult because of how steep it is - 1,500 feet in just under 2 miles. Since it was raining in the morning, the humidity was high making this a more difficult than normal hike, but we made it there and back without getting rained on.

The wildflowers in this area are just starting to pop up. We only saw two different wildflowers, but it's the start of our favorite hiking season.