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Published: December 27th 2007
Sledding at Jen's house
Nicki gets ready to take on the hill!We arrived in Colorado on the 22nd and straight into three straight days of feasting! Between fondue, turkey, and burritos, we were able to fit in some sledding down the hill behind Jen's house and some cross country skiing down the roads near Marlene's! We were lucky enough to have snow on Christmas for a real White Christmas experience.
After Christmas we sampled the local products of the area and toured the factories. Coors Beer is brewed in Goldern, Colorado and they have beer taps in the lunch room (all employees are allowed two beers after work - sign me up!) At the end of the tour we got three free beers to try and they invited us back anytime for the "short tour" (straight to the tasting room for the free beer!). We followed the beer that night with some New York style pizza (thin crust, cheese falls off, plain and greasy - yum!)
The next day we went up to the town of Boulder. We sampled Mead (honey wine there and saw the Leaning Tree Western Art display. To warm up from the cold day, we dropped into the Celestial Seasonings tea with exotic flavours of tea
like "Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride" or "Red Safari Spice Rooibos".
The weather forecasted on the 30th was fine and sunny with some flurries in the ski areas so we headed up to Frisco to go cross country skiing for the day. After a long three hour ski, we decided it was best to head home while the sun was up because the wind was starting to pick up. Little did we know what we were in for! The wind started picking up to 70 miles per hour and the snow was falling harder, creating white-out conditions. The temperature was 0 degrees fahrenheit with a wind chill of -30!! They closed the highway back to Denver 15 minutes behind us while we were crawling with the other cars at 1 mile per hour. All along the 10 mile stretch to the Eisenhower tunnel (huge long tunnel through the mountains) there were cars stranded on the side of the road and even sometimes in the middle of it. Cars were sliding around and we started to slide a bit when we were miraculously saved by a plow truck getting in front of us and clearing some of the snow. Sadly, he
To the extreme
This guy said his monthly electricity bill was $5000! abandoned us at the tunnel so we we on our own on the other side of the highway. All you could see were the headlights in front of you. The snow would freeze instantly to the windscreen (even though we had the heater/defrost on full blast) and Nicki was scraping the ice off the windscreen as we were going! All in all, the 50 mile drive that would normally take an hour and twenty minutes took us 6 hours!
The next day was Jess' birthday and we were a bit tired from the night before so we intended to have a quiet New Year's Eve. We ended up at the Indian Hills local pub called the Sit N Bull. We did just that and got to know all the locals! We danced and ended up running the place by the end!
To keep the crazy adventures coming, on New Year's Day we decided it would be fun to jump into a frozen lake in a charity event called the "Polar Plunge". The lake was 39 degrees Fahrenheit and the outside temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn't quite as bad as it sounds because once we got in
the water, we went completely numb and couldn't feel anything! We swam 10 meters out to touch the ice on the frozen part of the lake and then hopped out of the water (then it was cold!) and ran to a hot tub! Brrrrr!
We ended our stay in Colorado with a trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park where we went for a long snowshoe (due in part to getting lost) and we saw two Moose who were only 25 meters away from us. We also saw more frozen waterfalls, Granby Lake which is a huge lake where normally everyone sails and fishes, but the boats were all frozen and covered in snow and so was the lake. We also went skating on a frozen lake in Evergreen and Nicki learned to turn!
Now we're heading back for the southwest with the first stop at Durango!
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Jen
non-member comment
great pics!
Those are good pics, I especially like the one on the top of the hill! It was so much fun hanging out with you guys over Christmas!! :-)