I feel like most Denver natives overlook the wonders in our own backyard. Before I tucked my camera away and shifted my focus to keeping the Book Nook up and running, I spent every spare second I had hopping into my old Jeep and exploring this beautiful state of mine. I was in talks with a local news station to create a segment finding the best places for staycations. I had dreams of making a coffee table book filled with photos from my hiking adventures in Colorado and then creating a show for the Travel Channel centered around the book. I try not to think about it much anymore. I keep the old map where I would mark off all my travels hidden in my bedside table. I only look at it when I really want to torture myself with thoughts of what-if or when I need to make a list of destinations for a famous author.

So much of this state goes unnoticed, but nobody can ignore the slice of heaven in Morrison. There’s nothing better than closing your eyes, breathing in deep the fresh Colorado air, and being cocooned in the beauty that is Red Rocks Amphitheatre. It’s the only place I let myself wander to anymore. Close and popular enough to give me the feeling of freedom without getting lost in it. When you’re here, a part of your soul settles and you find a peace I’d be hard-pressed to believe you can find anywhere else.

Or at least you can find peace if you don’t bring your best friend and sister with you and for some insane reason—I’ll never be able to pinpoint it—tell them about dinner plans with Jasper.

“You’re what?” Elsie’s thunderous shout breaks the calm, Zen mood of everyone around us. The thin, shirtless man wearing tie-dye leggings and a headband standing beside us shoots daggers at us.

Yikes.

“Sorry, sorry,” I say to the angry yogi before turning wide eyes to my lovely, wonderful, and loud best friend. “Shh! You can’t yell after yoga.”

“Girl, we are all the way the fuck outside.” Elsie doesn’t curse around her children, so when she’s only around adults, she does it in excess to get it out of her system. “I got up before my sleeping baby to drive all the way to fucking Morrison for yoga—something my childbearing hips are going to be very upset with me for tomorrow, by the way—and you just casually let it slip that you have a date with Jasper? I will damn well yell if I please and I don’t care who hears.”

She aims the last part at the man still glaring next to us, who—to his immense credit—only cowers a little bit before scurrying away.