It's Christmas!! For something completely different from the usual we are going hiking through the snow today but first we needed a big breakfast of scrambled eggs & turkey bacon that mum cooked up. We were heading past Boulder to the Hesse trailhead & taking the trail up to Lost Lake. From where we parked the car it was more than half a mile to the start of the trail, then a 2.88 miles return hike from there. We bought Dalton with us & he loved leaping through the snow & eating mouthfuls of it too. We rose 700 feet during the walk so on some of the steeper parts it was slow going as the altitude kicked in a little. Eventually we made it along the snow covered trail, through aspen & pine forests & over some mostly frozen creeks to the lost lake which was indeed lost, under ice & snow! Going down was much easier & we were soon back at the car just before the cold set in too much. On the way back from Denver we stopped for a bad coffee at some railway carriages that had been turned into a cafe. Back in Denver Jess & Sean set about making a Christmas dinner of roasted ham, a bean casserole & a pineapple/bread pudding thing. Mum & I contributed prawns & cocktail sauce for an Aussie feel. After our big if slightly unusual feast we only had time to pack up, clean up & then it was off to the airport as all of us were on the same flight to NYC then we were going our separate ways to Toronto & Pennsylvania. Our flight was on time & departed at 12.30.