Hiking--Castlewood

Since the lockdown we really haven't hung out with anyone.  We still aren't supposed to be in groups larger than 10 and we have stuck to that rule pretty well.  As we watch the numbers of cases, it appears that Colorado is slightly going down now, though it kind of plateaued there for awhile.  The rule for base is that no one except essential workers could come to work until there was a two week consistent drop in numbers.  That finally happened so Mike went in for one day this week for a few hours.  He will do that until they increase it to two days a week and so forth.  We had some friends text the boys and ask if they could come to the park and play groundies.  Mike and I said no to goundies because one, the park wasn't opened yet, and two, groundies is all about touching each other.  We told them they could go to Sonic with their friends.  I'm not sure that is really that different but it is less "touchy."  I guess if one of their friends were sick they could just cough on them and then it wouldn't matter.  Oh well.  They walked to Sonic and got drinks and then sat in the shade and talked.  We also let Eli have a friend over this week and then on Wednesday, we met up with a friend and her kids for a hike.  Her family already got Covid-19, and while there is still some questions about if you could get it again after having it, we decided to take our chances.  This whole pandemic thing is so weird and I honestly don't know how much socializing we should be doing but I figure if the number of cases are going down, maybe we can start seeing people again.  I do wonder if the cases will increase again after all the protesting happening though.  For the most part, we are all a little introverted in this household so staying home and avoiding people isn't that big a deal for us.  The hike to Castlewood was actually the perfect activity though.  Now that we are done with school the kids are getting a little bored so it was nice to get out.  Since both Michelle and I have younger kids we didn't do a long hike and actually, we stopped when we got to the water and let the kids play.  I'm sure the older kids would have enjoyed going for a longer hike but the littles were all hungry but the time we got done with the water.  We all got bitten by mosquitoes.  I'm so used to spraying myself with mosquito repellant in TN and FL and don't even think about it here in Colorado.  We hiked back up to the vans and since the picnic benches were all taped off I grabbed the tarp in the back of the van and we sat under a tree and had a picnic.  The sky started to cloud over and we heard lightning in the distance but thankfully did not get rained on.  Instead, it just cooled things down and made for such a pleasant lunch.  We sat and talked and the kids all chatted or played while I talked to Michelle.  Michelle lives in Colorado Springs so we met at Castlewood, almost the half-way point.  I think we are going to try and do more hiking so I'm on the hunt for more hikes that are half-way.