The 4th

The Fourth of July was a welcomed mid-week-weekend for me. Instead of going to class and work, I had a lot of fun in the outdoors!

The day started when I woke up at 5am to go on a hike with Ryan. We chose the Royal Arch trail in Chautauqua.



Early morning mountains with the moon.



Beautiful Boulder is just waking up.



It was a gorgeous trail, and at times, it was difficult to believe that I was in the same city that has so many brown lawns from drought.



Here is the summit and the namesake! The view from the top is phenomenal!



After the hike, Ryan and I came back and had an enormous breakfast. It consisted of whole-wheat blueberry waffles, peaches, raspberries, and applewood bacon. We were most definitely stuffed, and probably ate all of the calories that we had burned off in the morning hike.

Since it was still early (around 10 am), I made a blueberry pie to save for later:



At around one, we met up with a few others at the Boulder Reservoir to enjoy the sun. The place was pretty packed, but we still were able to splash around and have some fun. After two draining hours of running around there, we stopped for ice cream to help us cool off even more.

The day was finally capped with fireworks. We found a spot just north of the stadium (where the annual show is)...that way, we got to enjoy the show from up close, but without the crazy amounts of people or the obnoxious music. I brought my pie, and we watched the fireworks with a pie picnic!



The grand finale consisted of so many glittering explosions, that the pictures all looked like giant fuzzballs!