Colorado

Hello again,

I hope everyone had happy, safe and enjoyable Fourth of July Weekends. C and I definitely did.

We went to Colorado on Friday and came home Monday evening. I had never been to Colorado before, and C had only been once to ski. Anyways, I'll try to give a good summary of the weekend, while still keeping it relatively short. If you have more questions, ask them!

Best way to recap the weekend:

Colorado

We stayed in Boulder for the first two nights. It was nice. The drive up the mountain to Rocky Mountain National Park was about an hour. We did that twice. Then, we stayed in Denver Sunday night. There are some pictures of Denver towards the very end of the album.

Boulder has a neat pedestrian mall which is called Pearl Street. C and I ate a couple of meals and shared some gelatos there. There were always performers putting on little concerts or shows. It was a cool place to see. Lots of restaurants, cafes and boutiques. We also took a small walking tour of the University of Colorado's campus. It has some nice spots with lots of open green space. There is even an area with a pond and bridge. It's also really neat how close the campus is to the mountains. Unfortunately, not many students around. So it is a little bit difficult to get an idea of campus life.

Obviously, part of my weekend quest was to sample local beers. (Colorado has a bunch of microbreweries that have become relatively popular) I actually tried two beers from Boulder, Avery's IPA and Upslope's IPA. Avery's was pretty decent. Upslope's was the oddest version of an IPA I have ever tasted. Not sure I would even allow myself to call it an IPA. Minimal hoppiness and tons of malt.....hmmmmm? Not sure. Also, I tried a pilsner from Left Hand Brewery. Left Hand is based in Longmont which I believe is about 30 minutes from Boulder. I've actually tried Left Hand's Milk Stout at Nessun (best restaurant ever), and it is really good. This pilsner though was not cutting it. Maybe it's just a product of my general disdain for pilsners. Anyways, Left Hand can't be all that bad because I wanted to find their website and instead found that they have no real website! They only have a Blogspot account just like me! hahaha. So, they get a pass...but just this once. (see how I incorporated a lil mini BWBB in here? pretty clever huh?)

Also, in Boulder, C and I had one really good meal. C's halibut was perfectly cooked and came with all the veggies that she always craves. I had this cool vegetable sampler. See picture.

From Colorado

Ok, let's move to the park, which was the real reason we went to Colorado. It was awesome. I wish the pictures could do justice to the views and landscape, but sadly, they cannot. C and I have zero hiking experience, but we both thought, "hey, we are young, relatively in shape and adventurous." So we set out with a plan to just hike until we couldn't walk anymore. Well, we achieved that goal on the first day. Haha. I won't recap everything we saw or did, but the first day, we hiked about 12 miles. It was fantastic. Highlights included Alberta Falls, Mills Lake, The Loch and Andrews Glacier. The photo below shows me at the highest point we reached. We read that Andrews Glacier is about 11,700 ft, but we couldn't realistically get up there. It was getting real serious at that point people! Like there might have been no more blogging had we tried to reach the glacier.

From Colorado

The second day of hiking we went about 9.5 miles. Some of it was trails we had already seen the previous day, but all of the lakes were new. The coolest lake of day #2 was definitely Lake Haiyaha. We took this crazy trail through the woods to get to the lake. When you get there, there are tons of rocks, and you can just sit on them while you eat lunch/stare at the lake. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a beer...but I don't think my back was capable of that.

From Colorado

Honestly, such an awesome experience that C and I would encourage everyone to do. I already can't wait to go back. Next time around, I would love to hike to Flattop Mountain, which is like 2,800 ft above the trailhead. That is like 12,300 ft! How tight would that be?!?!?! I'll probably have to start actually working out/preparing for that, but it's on my list of things to do.

I think that's all for now. Like I said, I could go on forever, but I don't want to make anyone have to read all that...haha. So, enjoy the photos. (C is a fantastic photographer) I'll be blogging again soon, probably a World Cup final preview. Reminder, Spain plays Germany tomorrow for the right to face the Netherlands in Sunday's finale. You know I'll be pulling for Spain. Vamos.

Hope everyone is doing well.

-Jon