Far from the I-70 corridor of Colorado, we found ourselves tucked away in the remote mountains and endless pine trees that make up Gunnison National Forest. We came here to spend Thanksgiving week with Anna’s family in Ohio City, CO. The “city” is more like a couple of old log cabins built during the thriving mining era in Colorado (late 1800’s). Anna, a good friend of mine, had invited me to enjoy Thanksgiving with her family and husband, Anthony. I though about this for less than 5 minutes, aching to get out of the crowded streets of Denver and into the mountains, and said “HELL YES!”
Anthony was stationed in South Korea with the U.S. Air Force for an entire year. By the time he had come home to Denver, Anna and I had befriended one another through mutual friends and had a strong relationship, aka Bachelor watching, wine drinking, and backyard BBQ girl gang. Fast forward to Thanksgiving, we loaded up three dogs, three humans and a bunch of ingredients for our Thanksgiving recipes and drove 4 hours from Denver to Ohio City, CO. We spent our days and nights drinking beer, playing fish bowl, dancing in the snow and warming our toes by the fire. Oh, and we even went dog sledding with Anna’s insanely talented and intelligent sister, Abbey (check her out here).
The day after Thanksgiving was Anna’s birthday, and as a gift I wanted to give her the best gift that I could possibly give: lasting memories. I pulled out my camera, Anna and Anthony got dressed up and we hiked up a hill behind her parent’s house with spectacular views of the Sawatch Mountain Range. We then headed into Pitkin, just 15 minutes down the road, for some snow-covered pine photos. Low and behold as soon as we got there, the snow just started DUMPING, and I mean there were a couple inches by the time we got back to the car 20 minutes later. My favorite thing about snow photos is that there is no faking the laughter and smiles. There’s just something about kissing and playing in the snow.