Francophile in the West

This past weekend, myself and six friends from Korbel spent a couple of days in and around Great Sand Dunes National Park in Southwest Colorado. I had been there once before in May ( it snowed... a lot ), and one other person in the group had been there as a kid, but it was most of the group's first time to the Dunes. We had a blast camping near Zapata Falls, exploring the Dunes by day, stopping by some hot springs for a dip, cooking up a storm around the campfire, and cracking ourselves up about life and randomness hilarities.  Hello, beautiful! We got up early on Saturday morning and headed to the Dunes first thing. We arrived in the Park with perfect timing and were able to stay for over four hours before it got too hot and too crowded and we headed on to other activities. We climbed the High Dune, took lots of pictures, jumped off of sand ledges into sand pits, frolicked and ran down the sandy hillsides, and ate lots of string cheese to fuel the journey. This was the b

It is summer in Colorado! And what a glorious summer is has been so far. With this being my first summer in Colorado and with a full-time job, I've been more intent than ever on trying to take good advantage of my weekends and be an outdoor weekend warrior. Here are the updates from some recent wilderness adventures:  Mt. Elbert - 14,439 feet / 4,401 meters On Saturday, 11 July, myself and four friends from school hiked and summited our first "14er", Mt. Elbert. Mt. Elbert is the highest peak in Colorado, and the second highest peak in the contiguous United States, behind Mt. Whitney in California. Four of the five of us hadn't yet climbed a 14er, and three of the five are leaving the state at the end of July, so we figured we might as well go for the biggest of them all! I must say, we chose wisely. On Thursday night, I packed up all my gear, and once I got home from work on Friday and the whole crew gathered at our house, we took off like a shot (okay, no