Colorado

I'm in Aspen, Colorado visiting my family and taking a vacation in the mountains. The land is so gorgeous, everywhere you look, there are incredible vistas of mountains, valleys, gorges and clear-running streams. This is a photo of my sister and I at the end of a fairly difficult hike to the Savage Lakes. We saw maybe a total of 5 people in 4 hours of hiking up to 11,600 feet. This country is stunning, yet the Aspen area is inhabitated by people who are enormously rich. The town of Aspen, while very tasteful and picturesque, is overrun with jewelry and fur stores. The kind of place where the people who actually work there have to live in the next town over, a collection of trailer parks kept hidden from view. My parents come up here for about 6 weeks in the summer in order to escape the heat in Houston and to hike, fly fish, relax, etc. My sister and her family are up here as well, so it's a good chance for me to bond with them while I vacate. The dry, cool air is a welcome change from Tallahassee. I couldn't live in Colorado, though...too far from the beach.