First Day in CO!

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June 25th 2007

Published: June 25th 2007

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Regis

Mountains!

The mountains were REALLY far away, I took this one in the WalMart parking lot, which was a good half an hour outside of the airport

Colorado Day 1
Regis So I did manage to finish packing and get an hour of sleep before leaving at 4:45 to get to the Chambana airport. That is by far the smallest airport I've ever been in, I think there were only 5 gates! Speaking of small, the airplane itself was also tiny, but it did have fancy leather seats. I was really hoping to see the University as we flew over, but there was an insane amount of fog so I couldn't actually see anything once we got up. The plane also went way faster than any of the larger ones I've been on (probably because it's smaller).

The flight to Dallas was pretty uneventful (mostly because I fell asleep as soon as I got my cranberry juice). Then I hung around in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport and had a smoothie and read my book before getting on the plane for Denver. There was a woman near me who was headed out to Colorado for a science conference that involved hiking, I need to find that when I'm a teacher!

As we began to descend to the Denver airport I got really excited and started looking out the window, and

WalMart

Seriously the nicest WalMart I've ever seen, and the employees were so nice!!

much to my surprise there were no mountains and it was all gross and scrubby out. Once I was in the airport I could see the mountains but they were so far away! As it turns out the Denver airport isn't in the city of Denver, it's it own little town outside of Denver.

So Heather picked me up and we started our drive to the mountains. The tolls in Colorado are ridiculous, $2 and we had to go through two of them! Gas is pretty reasonable though, only about $3.40. We stopped at WalMart so Heather could stock up on supplies she couldn't get in town and I wandered around and found this crazy bag of Doritos that is apparently a super secret new flavor. From the ingredients I guessed that they would be hamburger flavored.. and they were!!! Pretty accurate too, kinda like eating a really crunchy McDonalds cheeseburger. After the shopping trip we stopped for lunch at the Barking Dog Cafe in the town just outside of Estes Park.

I took a TON of pictures on the way up to Estes because the mountains/boulders were amazing and huge. Once we got into town Heather took

Driving Pt 1

Check out the trees on the top of the rock!

me on a quick driving tour and then we stopped by her house. I ended up having a room to myself! As you can see the internet works, but the phone service is a little flaky so text messages are probably the best way to get a hold of me.

After dropping off my bags we went to visit the climbing store that Heather works in. I picked out some climbing shoes and a harness that I'm going to go buy tomorrow morning when her manager isn't there and she can give me her employee discount, woot! I'll post pictures of my new gear soon but my harness is purple and my shoes are bright blue!!

The we stopped at the grocery store and went back home to make dinner for our picnic. We made some adorable mini pizzas then packed them up and went for a looooooooong drive into Rocky Mountain National Park and up Trail Ridge Road. We stopped at the Ute trail and decided to climb up the highest rock formation to have our dinner (pictures coming soon!). For about the next hour we just climbed around on the rocks like mountain goats and I

Driving Pt 2

Cool house...

must say I'm impressed with the grips on my little WalMart velcro shoes...We had planned to watch the sunset from up there, but the sun was taking too long to set and Heather decided that the views would be better at the visitor's center so off we went! I've got tons of gorgeous sunset pictures, but unfortunately as soon as the sun went down I couldn't stay awake anymore. Heather drove back down and I really tried to stay awake, but it was just impossible.

We got back to her place around 9:30 and I'm going to head off to bed as soon as I finish this. I'll post again when I get back from my first outdoor climbing adventure! Wish me luck 😊

PS: There are like 60 more pictures under this entry so check them out!

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