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Published: September 16th 2009
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The Grand Boulevard, I70 thru the Rockies.Thursday, Today was our 15th Wedding anniversary. At least I bought Kylie a card and some chocolates, Hey were on a trip of a lifetime, what more does she want !! We went for a bike ride around the State Park today, they have real good tracks to ride on. This park had a wildlife Park inside it, not that we saw much. Just rabbits all around our site. Theres a model airplane area just over the way from our site. There is someone there from 1st thing in the morning to last thing at night. Josh and I went over to be noisy. Some of these guys are really into it. One guy had a car sized closed in trailer, with a tool box and bench in the front. Carpet throughout and shelves and tie downs to hold down his planes . Couple of guys had helicopters there, amazing what they can make them do. In the afternoon, we went to a snow ski and boot sale that Kylie found in the paper. Bad idea !!! They were selling out last years stuff to make room for this year at 40 - 70% off. We had a field day, an
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Our Funky diner we went to. expensive one I might add. Then we did some groceries on the way home, while we still had some money left. Had another fire at night, beautiful sitting out there under the stars. Denver airport is one of the main hubs in America, so we get to watch planes flying over all the time.
Friday, we packed up and headed west into the Rockies. Well the poor old Dodge had to use all of its horses today. We dragged up some of those hills for ages. Denver is at 5,000ft and at the summit I think we got up around 9,000ft. Over here if your going below 40 MPH on the interstate your'e spose to put your hazards on. Good idea when youre coming up on a truck that’s going slow, or us !! I70 is spose to be one of the most scenic interstates in America. Unlike New Zealand , they don’t have many scenic lookouts like we do. You just have to keep on trucking, which is a shame. We turned off I70 and headed up towards Aspen. Our campground is just outside a little place called Carbondale. Very nice place, but at the office they have a
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The beautiful streets of Aspen. warning about brown bears in the area. Its coming up to winter and they are filling themselves up before they hibernate. They’ve had two in the camp lately from people leaving food out on the tables outside. They reckon they can smell food 5 miles away. Once we set up camp, we jumped in the car again and headed up the road 30 miles to Aspen. Not quite like going to Whakapapa. It’s a two lane highway all the way up there. We walked around town for awhile. Nice shops, most of them skiing and clothing shops of course. Some very nice wine bars and Café’s are along the paved tree lined streets. Two small creeks run along the center of the walking streets right down to the McDonalds, that’s not allowed to put up a neon sign . On the way home we stopped and had tea at an old silver looking Diner with the neon lights around it. Kylie has been wanting to eat at one of them for awhile. Very nice too, right down to the little takey number plates and the Dianna Ross gold records on the wall.
Saturday , we headed back up to Aspen.
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Heres the ski area/lift at the end of the street in Aspen. They had a farmers market on, which was very nice but a bit pricey for us. They had closed off a couple of streets and set up their tents along them . We saw some affluent looking people walking their oversized poodles to which we had a good chuckle at. Kylie looked at a skirt for $98 and a scarf for $98 too. There was a guy selling bronze statues , One of a life sized Cougar on a rock would have to had to have been worth thousands. Tori bought a cup of lemonade for 50c from some girl fund raising, we bought some fresh veges, as well as some Buffalo sausages. Another walk thru the shopping area of town was a costly exercise as they really do have some nice shops with good prices as things aren’t to good in Aspen at the moment. Numbers are down and businesses are hurting. A trip up the gondola to the snowdeck restaurant on top of Aspen Mountain was an awesome experience. Over 10 minutes at least to get up to the top, on the way we had an excellent view of Aspen and the surrounding area. We saw a couple
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Arty photo of the Cafe' area of Aspen. getting married up there, what a setting with the view behind them was breath taking. We played frisbee golf on the highest frisbee golf course in the world !! Considering we were up at 11,200 ft , is was quite warm. Kylie bought a Aspen staff sweatshirt on the way down, to make it look like she worked there. Then we jumped on our bikes and headed around town, we found the bike trail that heads all the way back to Glenwood Springs 40 miles away. They are very well set up for cycling in this area, the paved path that ran along the tree lined stream was awesome to bike along, we did a loop that took us out of town a bit and back in thru the suburbs. Tori wasn’t very happy about going up the hills, so we swapped bikes and that didn’t seem to make any difference. Aspen was the 6th largest producer of Silver in America and the 16th largest in the world in the 1890’s before it crashed in 1893. We rode past one of the many ruins of an old silver mines in the area. We parked In the center of town ,
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Up the top of Aspen mountain, ski slopes carved out in the trees behind. next to a park that had huge tree goal post set up for Rugby, most of the people we talked to seem to know where New Zealand was ,due to Queenstown.Back at the camp I went over and payed to stay another night, and the lady in the office said “Please tell your daughter , she has beautiful penmanship”. She looked at me a bit funny the day we got here and I got Tori to fill out the forms. We have no internet at this campground as well as no sewage hookup , so we are really roughing it. We decided to play travel scrabble for a laugh. Mrs C won and has been going on about it ever since, so I can see a rematch coming up soon. Still no sighting of bears, I keep looking. I would like to see one from a distance and take a photo, NOT right outside our door !! We all got woken up in the midle of the night to an awesome thunder storm, the thunder seemed to roll for ever . We are in a valley , so the thunder just echoed around and it was directly above us. It
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View of Aspen surrounding area and town from the Gondola. woke the kids up too, so Tori and I watched the lightning out her window while she went back to sleep.
Sunday, we woke up to another beautiful blue sky, bit cold about 10 degrees. Most people in the camp are packing up and heading home, we on the other hand had a bit of a lie in and then Josh cooked us Pancakes for brekkie. Today we drove up to Maroon Bells, a National Park. Due to the numbers of tourists driving up there, the road is closed off between 9am- 5pm . You have to go up on a guided bus for $20 for a family. So we walked around by the lake and Kylie wanted to go for a short hike. The bus driver said it took him 45 mins. So off we set, very picturesque it was , we came out at some carpark after 25 mins. So we carried on down the mountain.Typical, ¼ hr down the track and I got stung by a wasp on my ankle, well I can certainly tell you that felt good when the pain went away. After about an hour of walking we decided , that yes, that was
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Our campsite in amongst the trees and bears at Carbondale on a sunny morning, 7 degrees !! the place we should have stopped at and we are now going for a long hike. About 7 miles till we got to the next carpark. We met some others along the way, some older lady fell over and hurt her leg. So when we got to the carpark ,there was a guy on a horse that had passed us while we were walking and I said to him about it. So he went back in and got her on his horse. They picked us up at the top of the road and gave us a lift back down to our car. The weather up here is weird to say the least. I guess it could be the altitude or just were in the Rockies, but we left Aspen in sunshine, drove thru rain like it was flooding the road and really hard to see the car in front of you and then fine again down the road, the road was dry. We drove down to Glenwood Springs to go for a swim ‘in the largest natural hot springs in America’, Yeh $48 for the 4 of us !! I don’t think so, so we drove back towards Denver thru
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The river 20ft from our trailer. the scenic highway. Parked up and got the bikes out and went for a ride along the trail that runs beside/ under at times the road. We saw some people fishing and kayaking in the river. After all that exercise, hopefully everyone should sleep well tonight.
Monday, We packed up again and kept heading west. The Rockies are are definately an impressive site , most of the way from Glenwood Springs, we drove in the valleys, so not as many big hills. Then we got into Utah , what a bareen deserlit place that is. We nearly got caught again, Kylie saw a sign saying , "Next service area 110 miles", so we had to pull in and fill up even thou I was on half full. At the vistors center it said that 80% of Utah is Federal owned land.Thats huge !! You can see why, alot of it is just bare land, with tussock grass and hills that jut up from the landscape. Weird shaped hills and lines of different colours along them. Problem was it just went on for hours and hours, sounds terrible but I guess if you lived there you would just say "yeh ,
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Maroon Belles valley, Aspen. Yeh , the hills look awesome ". Finally after dodging another thunder storm, we reached the mountains just outside Salt Lake City. The wind was blowing so hard past the windmills beside the road, I thought we were going to loose our little trailer as we were getting blown all over the road. Arrived into Salt Lake City in the rain, found a campground. Josh and I had no sooner set up the trailer and the rain stopped, Typical !! A lady today said " If you don't like the weather in Utah, Wait 5 minutes !!" it seems to be true. So we shot down to Taco Bell for tea just down the road. Tori has caught a cold so she was coughing and spluttering all night, Every train that came thru the city seemed to have a new horn for christmas and was quite happy to share it with everyone !!
Tuesday, We had a slow start. Heading out to the Olympic park , that held the 2002 winter Olympics. We took the tour, which was well worthwhile. They took us up the top of the Luge shoot, top of the Nordic jump. That is impressive to see,
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Very scenic, Maroon Belles again. they are made of plastic so they can be used in summer and winter. The longest one is 110m long, from the top you can't even see the landing hill. He said the skiers just disappear over the hill for about 5 seconds until they come out at the bottom. Its the 2nd safest sport at the Olympics behind Curling!!They have practise freestyle jumps there too, the U.S. ski team were there today training. That was cool to watch, Yes thats where they went on Amazing race if you saw it last year. I enquired about doing it but they finished doing it last week for the year.They come down this huge ramp and do their flips into a big swimming pool, as they land a guy presses a button and all these bubbles come up from the bottom. They act like a foam pad to land on, their heads hardly even go under the water. We went hru the museum side of it, they had some amazing stories from the 2002 games. Allisa someone from Aussie who won the gold medal in the freestyle event after the top ranked aussie busted her knee in practise a few days before.
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Having a rest on our hike !! 2nd and 3rd ranked bumbed out and she won a gold at her 1st Olympics. Came back here for lunch before going into downtown Salt Lake City. We went to the ' Temple Square' home of the Mormon church !! Go figure when they come round home we tell them to go away, when we come here we go to see where they all hang out !! So we went on the free guided tour with two of the sisters that are here for 18 months ' Tour of duty', sorry to serve their religion. Built between 1853 and 1893 the Salt Lake Temple is a large building used for sacred ordinances, no tour in there. But inside the 'Tabernacle ' was pretty impressive, they can seat 14,000 people in there. Its a big domed shaped building. You can also use their free computers to search for geneology, as they have one of the largest data bases available to people searching their heritage. Kids had a swim tonight after tea in the hot pool.
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Moleta Gang
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Everytime we read your blog we get blown away with all the places and things that you are all doing!!!!!!!!!! I must say Josh and Tori must be learning so much about all the places that they have been too... jeepers you are both going to find school so boring next year compared to what you are doing now.... Josh nongy said you got into Boys High! you will be able to spy on Caleb for us lol Your blog and pictures are amazing Paul... Ky havent heard from you for awhile, about time you got back on that laptop aye. Want to hear about all the shopping etc girly stuff that you and Tori have been up too. Have got the Big Cocktail Evening on this Friday at Nga Tawa, Oh how flash... Got the little Black number hanging in the wardrobe along with Perrys suit..... will have to email photos over!! Josh and Tori can't wait for you to get home then you can come and stay with us and make us Pancakes... you must be a whizz at doing them now. Anyway hope to chat soon. Miss you all......................... so so much xx