Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

    I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!

Category Archives: camping & hiking

garden of the gods

Will’s first ever hike as a young two year old was this short walk in Garden of the Gods.  If you have family in town and you’re visiting Garden of the Gods and want to do more walking than on the paved area central to the park, this is a good option. Siamese Twins Trail […]

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Spruce Mountain Trail Review

Spruce Mountain is another easy family favorite for those days when you want to go for a hike, but you don’t want to put any thought into it.  Fitting in with the other hikes I’ve posted about this week, it’s another hike I feel comfortable doing with the kids by myself on a weekday.  It’s […]

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Indian Paint Mines Review

The Indian Paint Mines in Calhan is another great walk for beginning hikers.  It consists of a 4 mile network of trails that can be customized to your kiddo’s distance abilities.  It’s another walk I feel comfortable doing on a weekday with just a toddler along.  It’s different from most hikes (although this really shouldn’t […]

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Mt Cutler Hike Review

At under 1 mile up and 1 mile back, with just enough elevation gain to make you feel like you’re really hiking and to give you some spectacular views, I think Mt Cutler is the perfect beginning hike.  We took both Will and Ellie on it for their first under-their-own-steam hikes at age 2.  Little […]

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Palmer Lake Trail Review

We enjoyed a new-to-us hike this weekend to the Lower and Upper Palmer Lake Reservoirs following the Palmer Lake Trail along North Manitou Creek. The hike to the far end of the Upper Reservoir comes in at just under 2 miles, and the elevation gain on the way up was steady, so it was a […]

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My Camping Tips

We took our first camping trip in years last weekend.  Nic and I both grew up camping, although admittedly at different levels of intensity.  What I call “camping” Nic calls “car camping” in a way that suggests that I’ve never been camping so much as I’ve just been staying at four star hotels.  I will […]

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