Buena Vista – Hiking & First Maternity Photo Shoot

We’d been hankering to get back to Buena Vista for some time. Basically we were waiting until the weather was good enough to take the trailer through the mountains to get out there. A glorious weekend presented itself and we were off.

It’s interesting to think about the fact that the last time I was in Buena Vista, I was pregnant, but I didn’t know it yet! We also haven’t de-winterized the trailer yet, meaning we don’t have water in the trailer and instead bring our own drinking water and use the park’s facilities. That is usually totally fine, and it worked this time too, but it’s just not quite as convenient when you’re guaranteed to have to get up at least once in the middle of the night to go due to being pregnant!

We went on a nice hike up in the bluffs next to the Arkansas River on the Barbara Whipple Trail system. We went up on the Whipple Trail and back around on the North Loop Trail, for about 2.5 miles total. The views up there are amazing. You see the rockiness of the bluffs, the Arkansas River and the valley / city down below, and the impressive Collegiate Peaks across the valley.

My Mom’s 60th birthday would have been this weekend. I think of her every day but especially on her birthday I reminisce and try to do something we used to do together or she would have enjoyed. So I feel like we celebrated properly by being out in such a pretty part of nature. Happy Birthday Mom! You are missed and very loved!

We took advantage of our beautiful surroundings to take some maternity pictures. Although it’s still somewhat early for that, we thought this could be a test run to see how well we could do this ourselves with our camera, tripod and remote. Though it took some trial and error and even some getting annoyed at first, we got past that and had a really great time taking pictures and really just kind of celebrating being pregnant and cherishing this life inside my growing belly! So here are some pictures from round one; we’ll take some more when we go on our “babymoon” later on in the pregnancy.