A few months back, Patrick and I found ourselves in Beaver Creek, Colorado in the midst of an epic family vacation. You might think using the term “epic” is a little overkill but anytime you get can me climbing mountains, navigating whitewater rapids, and exploring alpine forests there’s a good chance a story will emerge. {Just ignore, for the moment, the fact that my seven-year-old second cousin-in-law did everything I did and more}. And there was a cookie lady. Literally. Well, not literally, she wasn’t made of cookies – but she did walk around with a tray of free, fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. It was awesome. Anyway…

As usual, Patrick insisted that I carry my camera everywhere. I insisted it was supposed to be a vacation. So we compromised; Patrick got to carry the camera up mountains, down trails, and everywhere in between. Here are the results.

Ice Mountain has nothing us. We drank water straight from the waterfall.

Everest this is not. There was a gourmet dinner waiting for us at the top of the mountain!

I might not have taken this one…