Lets go to, I dunno.... Colorado?

I attended a cousin's wedding last weekend (congrats Katie and Mike!) in Iowa and had asked Christine if she was ok with a little road trip. At first, we were going to mosey back to north Virginia and hit up Shenandoah National Park and take the Blue Ridge Parkway south into NC and Great Smokey Mountains National Park. That was going to be a lot of driving. Christine gets car crazy after several hours (or days) of being stuck in a car, so that wasn't the best idea...

I pulled up a map and looked to see what was a day's drive or so from Des Moines. Looking around, it was apparent what the destination should be: west.

Denver is just around 10 hours from Des Moines. Only two states over (Nebraska and Colorado), so that is where we aimed. We'd head out there for a week, and I'll fly back to Boston for work on Sunday (today, boooooo hisssss) and Christine will drive back to Raleigh. She has 3-4 days to do it, so it shouldn't be too bad of a drive.



So now what we did:
- We camped in Nebraska one night at their largest lake, Lake McConaughy, for one night. We were the only ones at the campsite... set up camp just before dark, didn't have a fire since we had already eaten, and tried to watch the stars a few times. The moon started getting bright and filling the sky, so star watching wasn't too great. During the night, it stormed to our south. We got rained on. And we were right beside a busy Union Pacific railroad line, so we kept seeing and hearing trains all night. Not the best thing for people who aren't used to storms on the plains, and can hear a train and a storm at the same time. We were worried a tornado was close by several times.

- Camped in Rocky Mountain National Park two or three nights. We stayed in one of the few campgrounds open yet, Moraine Park. It was quite nice there; several herds of Elk (each herd having up to 50?) frequented the valley and the campground. Between the Elk droppings all through the campground, and being stuck beside/behind Elk several times on the road in and from the campground, it was neat to watch and hear them pull up grass as they ate.

Oh, and the snow covered peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park are gorgeous! If you have the opportunity to go, GO. Even in the off season, it was nice. Just be prepared to deal with snow. Between the Trail Ridge Road being closed (goes over the continental divide and is the highest paved continuous highway in the country) and several trails being under feet of icy/packed snow, we saw why snowmelt can keep rivers full all year.

- Stayed in a cabin in Estes Park off on of their rivers as it rained/snowed. The last few days we were in the mountains, it started to rain and snow. No more camping, we packed up and stayed in a nice cabin, Misty Mountain Inn. A very nicely ran place, and the rooms/cabins were also nice. We stayed put and enjoyed the snow.

- Drove out of the mountains to Denver and drove around town. Drove by a customer's site I've worked at behind the mountains, drove through the mountains some more, and went quazi-downtown to eat our one year dinner.

- Sunday is Christine and my 1 year wedding anniversary. We have till 5pmish to putz around Denver and do what we want, before she drops me off at DIA for the 4 hour flight to Boston. Then she gets to drive all the way home. Lucky :P




Its sooo nice out here. Christine may be getting a seasonal job at RMNP, and if she does, relocation will be strongly considered.