Day 3 rolled around, and I had been planning on mountain biking a really famous, gorgeous trail in Vail called the Grand Traverse Trail. You and your bike take a gondola up the mountain and ride down. I'd been researching this trail for weeks and was beyond excited to check this little expedition off of my bucket list. But fate had other plans in mind for my Thursday.
First of all, I over slept just a tad because of our late night of partying the night before at the concert. I also lost sleep due to some horrendous charlie horses in my calves...most likely caused by dehydration, the excessive running up and down those damn stairs at Red Rocks and possibly the altitude, though I could be mistaken. By the time I rolled out of bed Thursday morning, driving 2 hours to Vail and mountain biking all day just didn't seem probable. Plus, we were planning on meeting up with another one of Sam's cousins in Denver and needed to work our schedules out to actually hook up at some point, so my taking the car for 10 hours and leaving Sam at the hotel wasn't going to work out. After a quick breakfast at the resort, we set out to find one of the trails that we had passed on our way up the mountain, and also to check out the area where we had seen the moose the day before a little bit more thoroughly.
After taking a few different trails, we ended up on a paved path right outside of Winter Park that wound along a stream and into the woods. It was gorgeous! It began raining about half-way through, and the mosquitoes, roughly the size of a small bats, were ruthless. Knowing beforehand that mosquitoes were going to be an issue, I'd packed and thoroughly coated Sam and myself in insect spray and also SPF 70 sunscreen, which, when mixed with our pungent wet-dog odor and sweat, resulted in an interesting chemical cocktail that proved to be fairly effective. They were still quite curious though, and were dive-bombing themselves into our faces as we walked. It was as if they wanted to suck our life-giving blood so badly, but once taking a sip, decided it was pretty terrible tasting. Works for me! As a side note, I learned that our fancy bug spray/sunscreen mix will eat right through your top coat of fingernail polish, so lord only knows what it's capable of once it absorbs into your bloodstream...but that was just a chance I guess I was willing to take.
After a couple of hours we went back to hotel, showered, and made our way towards Denver. We ended up meeting his cousin at a brewery where we had a couple of drinks and played a game of Cornhole before he had to leave to run some errands. In the meantime, we hit up a shooting range and shot some guns which was a blast.
Afterwords, we met back up with Josh and his family and got some dinner. I've got to say, it's pretty exciting getting to meet some of Sam's family...I never thought that would be an option. I love that we can message somebody on Facebook after 20 years and meet up for drinks a few days later and it's like nothing has changed. I was so happy to see Sam happy with people he'd grown up with and shared so many memories with. It was a good day and totally worth missing out on mountain biking in Vail for...though I still need to check that one off of my list sooner than later :)
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| Sam's cousin Josh, his wife Tasha and their 3 kids |
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| Sam, Josh, and some mysterious bunny ears by Josh's son Riddick |
Friday morning, I'd made arrangements for us to go whitewater rafting on the Colorado River! I was so excited as I haven't rafted in about 20 years and it's been about as long for Sam. It was freezing cold when we left the hotel, but by the time we actually got on the river, the weather was perfect and the sun was hot. There were 4 rafts in our group and Sam and I got to sit up front in our inflated vessel which was especially exciting. The tour took us over class 3 and 4 rapids through an amazing canyon. We also had a crazed hippie in a cowboy hat shaped hard hat as our guide that had seemingly grown bored with his duties, so he was finding ways to get us killed every chance he could. Occasionally, one of the other boats would get stuck on a rock, so he'd have us paddle vigorously until we rammed into them and knocked them off of the rock. I almost got bucked out a few times and Sam was clinging on for dear life. At one point, he even had us slam head-first into a rock wall of the river going about 15 mph and we had to lean completely back to avoid bashing our faces in! We even rear-ended another raft so hard that their raft came up onto our raft and nearly took off my head in the process! It was a blast though. The scenery was amazing, the weather was perfect, and neither Sam nor myself fell out of the boat, so that's always a plus :)
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| Hanging out at Liquid Descent before we got on the bus |
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| The "Raging River of Death" |
After rafting, we hit up a local BBQ joint along the river in Idaho Springs that was amazing. We sat outside on the patio overlooking the water watching a little chipmunk build some kind of nest and listened to good music and ate amazing ribs. It was a pretty perfect morning.
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| This little fella gave us endless entertainment |
After shopping around town and grabbing a banana split, we went back to our hotel and Sam took a nap while I ventured out for another trail in the rain. I came across one with a few cars in the parking area, so I figured I'd be safe if I stumbled upon a Grizzly or an angry mamma moose or something. I found another creek with waterfalls and a mossy rock and just sat there for about an hour in the rain, listening to the thunder and smelling the wet pine and feeling like the forest was giving me the big bear-hug that I was in such desperate need of.
Again, the mosquitoes were atrocious and this time, though I had tried to spray myself thoroughly, I had, in fact, missed a couple of inches of upper thigh and my butt cheeks and I managed to get bit about 8 times in a 7" square piece of real-estate covered by my workout pants. Not too bad though, considering the swarms of them that I was sitting in.
On my way back to grab Sam for dinner, I wandered through Winter Park Village and drank hot cocoa, watched the mountain bikers and soaked up the rain.
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| Winter Park Village |
We decided to drive into town and see if we could find a restaurant that sounded good since we couldn't really decide on anything specific. I kind of wanted Mexican, Sam wanted either Pizza or some kind of Brewery, and we just decided to wing it. Well, lo and behold, we stumble upon a Swiss Chalet-style restaurant called Hernando's Pizza and Pub...are you kidding me? Everything we were looking for in one place and it was packed which is always a good sign..it couldn't have been more perfect if we tried. And it certainly didn't disappoint. We split a Margherita Pizza and Greek Salad and Sam got a local brew so he was a happy camper.
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| The walls and ceiling of the restaurant were covered in dollar bills...it was a pretty cool place with awesome food |
Saturday morning, we hit the road early headed towards Vail, where we wandered around a little bit and soaked in the sights. It was still early, so there weren't a lot of people out and about and it was gorgeous. The architecture there reminds me of something you'd see in Switzerland (which I'm slightly obsessed with), and the flowers were unbelievable. I could just sleep in the streets there...it was so pretty.
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| I'm not sure what this random painting is, but it seemed like a good place for a pic, so what the hell... |
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| The Four Seasons in Vail |
As we continued along I-70 back towards Fruita, we stopped for another hike to Hanging Lake, but the parking situation was beyond crazy. It was like "Black Friday"...people were getting pretty cut-throat about their parking spot. We were pretty bummed that we didn't make it up there, but what can you do. So, we drove on to Glenwood Springs, grabbed some lunch and hiked up to Doc Holliday's grave on the side of the mountain. Finally, we made it back to Fruita, got a tour of the local Fire House that Sam's cousin's husband is the Captain of, and went out for sushi.
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| Looking over Glenwood Springs |
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| Hiking up to Doc Holliday's Grave Site |
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| I even saw this little guy while we were wandering around and didn't freak out! I actually think he's kind of cute! |
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| Apparently there's a famous "headless chicken" that this is a monument to? |
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| ...and who can resist taking a picture with this big guy? |
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| Hanging out in a park after walking through town? The best way ever to spend our Anniversary :) |
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| Sam's cousin Jodie and her husband Josh |
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| There was this strange tourist trap past Moab that we couldn't resist |
Sunday morning, we went out to breakfast with our gracious hosts and hit the road. The drive home went considerably better since we actually knew where we were going this time :) We took some smaller, more scenic drives through Moab since we had a little bit of extra time and even had time to stop for a nice dinner in Flag before getting home at around 7 pm. Overall, we had an amazing time...so much so that we are already planning a trip back where we can spend much more time doing all of the things we didn't have time for this trip. It's great meeting people and finding new restaurants that I have a feeling we will definitely be back to. It was just what we needed before getting back to the grind on Monday...I go back to work full-time and Sam officially started EMT school, so it may be a while before we get another vacation...
