Right after Meredith & James’ Colorado Springs Sweetheart Session, I immediately opened a word doc on my phone and typed out a minute by minute replay of what we just experienced! And I am SO glad I did because I’m sure I wouldn’t have remembered all of the little details! This is the first time I’ve read what I wrote that night and I feel like I’m experiencing that incredible evening all over again!

Back in June, Tanner and I flew out to Boulder to photograph a wedding (more on that soon!), but because this would be our first time traveling TOGETHER, we wanted to make it extra special, so we traveled around Colorado a bit and ended up in Colorado Springs to visit Meredith (our childhood friend) & her crazy awesome boyfriend, James!

The week were in Colorado, it ended up being a bit rainy every day. I can’t even tell you how many times we heard the phrase “you picked the wrong week to be here, Colorado is always sunny!”. But Tanner and I actually love the rain, plus it made the weather much cooler, so we were pretty happy about it! We had originally scheduled Meredith’s session for sunrise the following day, but when we arrived in Colorado Springs, the sun was shinning and the weather was gorgeous so we dropped off our suitcases at the house, hopped in the jeep, an drove up into the mountains! Good thing we did because the next morning it was so dark and rainy that everyone would have been miserable.

We drove about 30 minutes up the mountains before we found a beautiful location right above the city! We pulled off to the side and just stared in awe at how beautiful the scenery was. The mountains were SO blue, but something we didn’t think about was how foggy it was getting the farther up we went. We decide to cut our time short at the first location because it looked like it might start raining soon! Driving up even higher into the mountains was INCREDIBLE! Tanner and I have never done that before and it was completely magical! We kept passing one untouched landscape after another. And with each gorgeous area I wanted to stop and pull over some more photos. But Meredith and James just insisted that we keep going.

At some point, we couldn’t see anything below us or in front of us. It was just a giant, thick cloud of fog. And then I remembered how high up we were and realized that we were in the CLOUDS!! My mind was seriously blown. I could visualize us down in the city, looking up at the cloud covered mountain tops… thats where we were! In. The. Clouds!! I thought for sure we would have to go back down to finish our session, but we just kept driving. We passed through these incredible tunnels and really narrow pathways, and the whole time I was wondering “Who made these? Why are these roads here?” (more on that later).

We had been driving for at least an hour, and at that point it was starting to get dark and there didn’t seem to be an end in sight. But all of a sudden, the fog cleared up and we were greeted with the most MAGICAL nature landscape! And then it hit me. WE WERE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. Right in front of us, was this insane, heavenly wonderland. I can’t even describe how magical it was. It was like being in a completely different world, untouched by man-kind.

After being awestruck for who knows how long (it literally felt like time stopped), we knew we had to start shooting if we were going to beat the incoming rain. I had such such such a great time shooting with Meredith and James, but it was getting dark fast, so we decided to do one last pose so we could hit the long road down the mountain. The second we got in the jeep, the heavens let loose! We could not believe the timing of it all!

When we arrived back at their house, I was dying to know exactly where we were on the map. So James pulled up google maps for me and spent at least 30 minutes following the virtual road into the mountains. We ended up finding out the location has a name!! Cathedral Park. Such a random, hidden area for it to have a name. So naturally, we googled it! What we found was SO incredible! I had been wondering who made the tunnels and why those narrow roads were up that far. Turns out, the road we had been traveling on used to be a railroad track during the Colorado Gold Rush! Thinking back to just a few hours prior, we couldn’t believe how incredible it was to be standing in the midst of history without even knowing it!

Meredith & James’ Colorado Springs Sweetheart Session is one we will never ever ever ever forget. Meredith & James, thank you SO much for opening your home to us during our incredible trip out west! We are so grateful to have gotten to spend time with you and we cannot wait until we see you again!