CO Trip Report

By now, you've probably seen our CO pics. The trip was pretty amazing. It all started with the hot air balloon festival in Steamboat Springs. The pictures kinda say it all. We didn’t go up in a balloon, but I'm glad we didn’t because we wouldn't have been able to take most of the pictures. I kept saying when we live in CO we'll be able to come back every year and go up in a balloon. Then we had a great breakfast in SS before hitting the road to Boulder.

SS was a really cool mountain town. Everyone was very laid back and outdoorsy - which is true for everywhere we visited. It was over an hour from the main interstate and I can't imagine trying to go there for a weekend in the middle of winter. Which reminds me of an interesting thing we saw: On interstate 70, they periodically have big railroad crossing gates that can come down over the entire highway. So that means the snow can get so heavy that they have to close the interstate. And this happens on such a regular basis that they've installed gates. That's a serious amount of snow.

Boulder was great, stayed in a nice Marriott. The city is very college townish in parts. The main downtown area was the Ithaca Commons just bigger and more cosmopolitan. We ate at a great tapas place. I imagine if we lived there I'd want to go all the time. The flatirons and the park around them were pretty. Lots of people walking their cute labs. I could totally see us living there, just don't know what we'd do for work. It's about 45-60 minutes to Denver. In the summer it would be doable, but I imagine the winter would be a tough commute.

Rocky Mountain National Park was a lot of fun too. I got altitude sickness - we were doing a lot of hiking and it was a pretty high elevation. The 14 mile drive up the one lane dirt road was a little scary. Hello to our friend Tex and his family - hope you're enjoying your throw blanket from the gift shop! Again, the pictures sum up the park - it was beyond beautiful.

Then we went to Colorado Springs - an even nicer Marriott with a great view of Pike's Peak. Garden of the Gods was cool and Ryan got lunch at Sonic. Then we drove up Pike's Peak - kinda scary. I have a fear of cliffs if there's no railing. I had a minor breakdown at one point - the picture of that (not uploaded onto Kodak) is kinda humorous. There was a ranger station a few miles down from the top where they check your breaks. Our crappy dodge was in a low gear the whole time and still almost 200 degrees hotter than it should've been. The ranger made us stop for a bit till the breaks cooled (hot breaks fail) - lots of other people had to stop too. Then we packed up our stuff and headed to Denver. BTW - when in CO Springs, be very careful what neighborhood you enter when you're trying to turn around.

Denver was quick - a very nice JW Marriott with great views of downtown and the mountains. We had a nice massage the morning of Ryan's bday. In the afternoon, we met our friends at the airport and headed to a brewery for dinner and saw a Rockies game. Then we headed toward Keystone for the weekend, making a quick stop near Buffalo Bill's grave where I had a little incident in the parking lot. Sorry, Bill.

Keystone was nice - a total ski resort town. It was very quiet in the summer. The condo we stayed at was really nice - lots of space for all of us. Had a fun little trip past a guy with a shot gun to pick up the DQ ice cream cake and load up on condiments for our upcoming BBQs. Word to the wise, sometimes I'm right and the GPS is wrong. The fireworks over the lake were cool. It was just nice to all be together and hang out.

The rafting was Sunday. It was a ton of fun for all of us - I'd love to do it again. I'll never forget the picture we never got of Greg flopping around in the front of the boat after one rapid! I also don't think I'll forget the fowl BO/wet dog smell of the wetsuits we were in for 5+ hours. Sparky - remember waddling around with our wetsuits half off trying to get to the bathroom?!

There was one very disappointing part of the weekend: the lovely barn puzzle some people were so diligently putting together every moment of every day was never finished. What a darn shame. It really broke me up to have to rip it to pieces Monday morning. Stupid puzzle.

So there you have it - some highlights of our trip. Thanks to everyone for a great weekend in Keystone - can't wait to see you for our 09 trip.