Colorado

Denver, Colorado springs, Nathrop, and everywhere small town in-between. Thursday, Feb. 9th, Amy and I flew to Colorado for a getaway weekend. We arrived Thursday morning in CO., rented a truck and took off in search of the wild west.

The trip started off with a bit of a worry as I quickly declined all insurance during the paper work process at the Budget counter ... I then realized as I pulled off the lot that I am a completely uninsured driver, no car insurance to my name whatsoever, unless my parents still have me under their family plan (which I doubt). So needless to say I was a bit worried driving this brand new (1,500 miles on the vehicle) Toyota Tundra around the mountain terrain.  Our first stop had us heading into denver to check out the downtown area… after talking with a few people we decided to head over to the coors factory before they shut down for the day. We snuck onto the last tour of the day (free)... the tour was a pretty standard brewery tour; hops, barely, blah blah blah… but at the end they gave us 3 free beers, which was great. It was on the tour that we learned of a beer that was brewed at the factory that we had never heard of before… Barmen. Coors only brews it for a few bars in Golden, CO. It takes 7 minutes to pour and is brewed in honor of Adolf Coors, the founder. He was born in Barmen, Germany. *it is important to note that not only do they supply this beer to a few bars, but they do not bottle or can the beer… so you truly have to be in Golden to drink it

From this point our trip turned into a driving tour of the rockies… we drove 3 hours to the cabin in Nathrop... we crashed very hard from our long day of travel, and woke early. The next day was Feb. 10, amy bday. We headed up the mountain on the advice of this pamphlet amy had describing an old mining town that is now deserted. The road took us on the craziest mountain road that the map claimed was a highway. We went up and over hills of snow and ended up at the ghost town… this is where the road ended. We then travelled to Breckenridge where the weather turned ice cold and snowy… after a few hours of walking around the touristy ski down (going in and out of what felt like thousands of tshirt shops) we left in favor of the natural hot springs near our cabin. The hot springs were one of the highlights of the trip… these weren’t your run of the mill hot springs, you see. The hot springs that I have been to in the past have just been naturally warm water funnelled into a swimming pool type environment. No No, not these… we actually walked into the river and sat down along in the running water. The temperature of the water was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The next day was spent driving to and spending time in Colorado Springs, but the highlight was the Royal Gorge. The gorge sports the highest suspension bridge in the world… and walking across it, you definitely feel like it. Not only did we walk across this terrifying thing, but we rode this “tramway” aircar thing. Strung on a couple of wires across this extremely high gorge we waved back and fourth in the wind as the car shimmied along. Colorado Springs is a great little town with a very cool downtown area with plenty of shops and restaurants. We ate dinner at this place called the “Melting Pot” all was well with dinner - we had great fondue style steak as well as the traditional cheese fondue. The dinner was fairly uneventful until amy touch the piping hot metal fondue bowl… her hand immediately burned. She iced it right away but the damage was done. The waiter brought over 2 types of burn spray and 2 bags of ice for the 2 hour drive back to the cabin… 1 of the bags being enormous… we left it with them, as we just couldn’t be seen carrying it out of the restaurant. She healed up a few days later.

Our final day was spent in Denver having lunch at a cool brewhouse in downtown. Afterwards we went to the airport to drop of the truck and get ready for our long journey home. We flew to dallas at 4pm and it was there that we found out that we would not be allowed to fly to New York that sunday night, nor would we be able to fly home the follow day (monday) and the we were booked on a tuesday flight; a 40 hour delay. So instead of blowing a day in dallas sitting at the hotel we got up at 4am and went to the airport at 5am. We stood standby for every flight starting at 6am and 9 flights and 6 hours later we finally got put on one, getting us home Monday evening… making for a 16 hour delay. It could have been much worse but still a pain… never really experienced watching a plane board and leave before, especially 10 times. A bit frustrating but the margarita’s at 10am definitely eased the pain.

The trip was totally relaxing and the worries of work never creeped into my mind, until about 9am (an hour before the margs) on monday. I realized how removed I was when I tried to log into my work email and server from the airport and I couldn’t for the life of me remember my log-ins.