Climbing Horsetooth Mountain

By mid-October, Mike figured it would be cool enough to climb Horsetooth. We lefl Denver at 8:30 in the morning and were at the bottom ot the mountain by 10:00am. It was already 80F.

No worries though, we were well-stocked with ice water, candy, and corn nuts…

On the very top of Horsetooth Mountain is Horsetooth Rock, which you can see Mike is so gracefully pointing out in the photo on the right (the actual tooth photo is below Mike).

The hike was 3 miles, and 2 hours to the top. We ascended 2000 feet on a trail through trees and rocks. Every so often, we’d reach an open place where we could see for miles.

We climbed up slowly and took in the scenery.

When we got to the end of the hike, it was time to climb. The last 30 feet or so were windy and cool indeed. But the paydirt was fantastic! Unfortunately photos can’t do it justice. Being up there with the wind whipping around and the hawks circling was truly amazing. We could see east into the horizon and west over the foothills and into the peaks of the mountains.

We stayed for a while to recoup before asking our jelly legs and knees to carry us an hour back down the mountain.

So, 3 hours and 3 liters of water later, we arrived back at the car. We slept well that night.

On another note, if you were wondering how in the heck the forest fires get started out here and more importantly, why they can’t be stopped, take a look at the photo on the right. Nothing but dry pine needles, cones, kindling, and leaves. We even passed a few charred trees on our way back down.

Tubing down the Cache de Poudre

Getting there
Splash time! It was hot as blazes that Sunday in late July so we ran to the river.

Our route was a bit circuitous because try as we might, Katie and Anne couldn’t find a daggum inner tube anywhere on a Sunday in Fort Collins. Yes, the elusive tubious innerbodia is skilled in the defensive arts of camouflage and being out of stock when necessary. After unfruitful trips to many-a big block stores, Big Lots came through with some crappy rafts (stores like that have crappy rafts in stock year-round—next to the crappy goggles, crappy snorkels and crappy squirt guns). The guys were not pleased with the crappy rafts that the women had so persistently hunted and determinedly gathered. But they had spent the morning in the air conditioning on the couch playing Tecmo Bowl (circa 1984) so their opinion didn’t count.

Luckily for them, however, they ordered and picked up pizza for lunch, which redeemed them. Luckily for you, I’m going to skip the part of the story when the guys went to an auto part store to buy “real” inner tubes and came back with not-so-glorious 30-inch go cart inner tubes. (Note the normal-sized tubes shown above to the right and compare it to the tiny version Brad is inflating to the left.)

So eventually, we got to La Cache de Poudre River. The locals pronounce it “poo-der,” which is not exactly as French as it should be, but no one from Pittsburgh has any room to criticize—hello… North Versailles (vur-sales)?

Buy a stroke of good karma, (as Brad helped someone change a flat at a gas station along the way) we ran into some people leaving the river who were willing to sell us their normal-sized tubes.

Down the River
The water was COLD! But it was fun as heck! The first thing Brad did was lose his beer then nearly die trying to retrieve it. Righto! Priorities! The first set of rapids we hit was scary, come to think of it, they all were… but there were so many people on the river, it made one seek comfort in that fact that we hadn’t seen anyone die yet…

Mike and Anne saw a crazy duck attacking a fish. It was sooooo Steve Irwin: oooh she’s a vicious one! It was about this time that Mike did an inventory and discovered that our Cache de Beer had been nearly eliminated by the greedy pull of the rapids. Two big rock collisions later and it was all gone.

Fare thee well, Coors Light. Go back from whence you came! Ah, the circle of life [insert cheesy Elton John song, no, don’t really. that song is terrible].

We made a good run. It was probably 5 miles or so. And now that we have real tubes (and some crappy rafts from Big Lots) we can go back to do it again any time, and I’m pretty sure we will. After all, we all survived and with some experience under our cold, wet belts, we have bigger, better plans for securing our beer.

the end.

Hiking Deer Creek Canyon

On the advice of Aunt Marcia and Uncle Tim, Mike and Anne headed south west to Deer Creek Canyon. And boy oh boy it was a hot day too.

This is the first park we’d been to that had a winding trail that went up up up and into the brush with some trees and a lot of good scenery. This is also the first time Anne actually felt she was acclimated to the altitude, as she could walk up a hill more than 15 feet before huffing and puffing. What a wonderful experience! Of course, we did start this trip off right by stopping to get candy. Naturally, Anne nags Mike about the increased risk bear and mountain lion attacks brought on by candy, and naturally, Mike sneaks candy (mouse over 2nd picture) past her and breaks it out 2 miles in to the trip… which they both share. (okay hypocrite! but it IS chewy Spree after all—who CAN resist?)

There are 12 miles of trail in this park and we only did 3 or 4 of them. Some of the trails are bike/horse/ped accessible and some are just ped. The mountain bikers here are nuts! They’ll go flying down a hill with gravel, big stones, sharp turns, and steep drops. You’ll see in the photo on the right where we stopped in a tree canopy so Mike could have his Swisher Sweet. And somehow he is frowning?

Anyway, by the time we got back to the car, we were bushed. I believe we ended the night with Mexican dinner and super saturated margaritas at Benny’s… if not, we should have.

Rocky Mountain National Park

The Drive Up & Winter Park
At last—we went into the mountains! Saturday morning, we got up and hit the road. The traffic was nuts! Once we were north of Golden, the traffic dissipated and the temperature dropped to a nice cool 60 something. We took 40 W from there and it was gorgeous! Our plan was to meet our friends Brad and Katie at Winter Park (a ski resort) for mountain biking and hiking during the day, then head over to Lake Granby to camp in a friend’s back yard. That’s not exactly how it panned out.

We made it to Winter Park all right… we rode the alpine slide and goofed around the little town area. Though Mike had been the responsible one who read the weather forecast for the night (45F!), he was also the one who forgot to bring a fleece jacket. We picked up a fleece at a ski shop sale in town.

After about 5 hours of traffic and complications, Brad and Katie made it to Winter Park. We all decided that instead of mountain biking, we’d hit the road for another 30 min. head up to our backyard campsite. Or, we tried…

Camping in the National Forest
As it turns out, we couldn’t reach the friend with the backyard. We spent the next hour or so trying to find an open campsite (in the Rocky Mountains on the 4th of July weekend…) and ended up in the national forest. There are no official campgrounds the forest. It’s just a pull-off-and-camp kind of place. Perfect!

We were set up with beer in hand in no time. There were brats a-plenty and firewood galore. In the morning, one of us (who shall remain nameless, but she’s about 5’4” and blond) woke up feeling a bit defeated by the Zima (Zima?!) she drank the previous night.

This is why when she heard the song of a nearby camper drifting through the trees and in through her thin tent walls, she thought it was the Zima talking. “Covered in rainbows…” at the top of his lungs, singing his little heart out, our neighbor crooned, “covered in tadpoles… blah blah blah… covered in rainbows”

None of us understood it. Most certainly the only thing we were covered in at the time was bug spray.

Mike and Brad took the bikes out for a spin. In a moment’s time, Mike was wounded. His foot having slipped, allowed the pedal to spin up an bite his shin. Ooooh bloody! Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.

After burgers for breakfast, we were off to Rock Mountain National Park and certain altitude sickness.

Inside Rocky Mountain National Park
There are few things that don’t disappoint. For example, Niagara Falls is beautiful, but many a’skilled photographers and videographers have successfully captured images and sounds that one cannot from safely leaning over a railing and peering down into the mist. The Eiffel Tower, again is nice, but movie lighting and drama make it seem more romantic than it really is on a hot, humid summer afternoon.

The Rocky Mountains kick ass. This park does not disappoint. Turn after turn, there are breathtaking views (literally—hello—altitude here), elk, lakes, trees, snow, sun, blue skies, and an utter sense of openness. It is in a place like this that you feel alive. Simultaneously powerful and miniscule, one is tall enough to see the world at once, and yet so close to being dashed off the edge by the wind and one’s own awestruck obliviousness.
At the highest point, about 12,000 feet, we got out of our cars. Gusts of wind caused us to trip over our own feet. The wind chill made it feel like 20F and the insides of our ears ached for 45 min. after getting back in the car. Mike and Anne were feeling woozy by the time we started descending in altitude again. What a fantastic park!
After winding back down the mountains, we all headed through Estes Canyon on our way to Fort Collins. Totally bushed by 6:00pm we had burritos and crashed on the couch with a movie at Brad and Katie’s house before passing out.

In the morning, Mike and Anne got up early to beat the weekend traffic home (and it worked!). After showering, we vegged out for a bit then made our plans to go see Blues Traveler at Red Rocks Amphitheater that night. The concert was awesome. We’d never been to a natural amphitheater AND we’d never been able to stand at the top of a concert venue and see fireworks from all over the city. It was a wonderful end to a great weekend.

The end.

Dinosaur Ridge

Back a long time ago, I believe some time just before tv was invented, there were these really big-ass lizards that walked around and ate plants and stuff.

Then they all died. Shortly thereafter the Rocky Mountains were born. And now that we’ve had our refresher in history, let’s look as fossils.

Behind Anne in this photo are footprints. The whole area was actually a lakebed that dried and was raised up when the creation of the Rockies crumpled the ground.

The footprints and fossils were discovered when the highway was being built through the ridge and along the foothills. The area is now preserved.

Confluence Park in Downtown Denver

There is a bike/ped trail 2 blocks from our house that goes 4 miles west to Downtown and a long way east out to a reservoir and beyond.

We’re not in “east and beyond” shape yet, so we’ve been going west–to the action.

Mike found this park one evening and said it was a must-see on a hot day. He was right. The bridge you see is Speer blvd., a major road that cuts through the city, and I-25 is just out of sight in this photo. Downtown is to Mike’s right.

What you don’t see in this picture is the loads of kids in inner tubes and rafts and all of the kayakers. Considering the par was packed, how did we manage to take a picture without them? Go figure.

On the South Platte River side (seen above), there is a small set of rapids and some pool areas. On the Cherry Creek side (around the corner to Mike’s right), the water is smooth and this is where the dogs play.

It’s smaller than Point State Park, and certainly the rivers here are TINY too, but it is a fantastically accessible amenity to have within biking distance to our home.

We found it in good timing too–we were just starting to miss going to Flat Rock at Linn Run state park.

We also discovered locks along Cherry Creek that are used by people taking rides on those little boats that make Venice famous. Very cool.

Hiking in North Cheyenne Canyon

We decided to head to Colorado Springs one day. We figured there’d be lots of things to do there. After all–it is Colorado Springs, eh?

So we hopped in the Kia and 45 minutes later, we still had 40 miles to go. So we ended up at the Renaissance Festival in Larkspur instead and had a corset-bustin’ good time…

The next weekend, we tried again. Only this time we left in the morning. We got to the town of Colorado Springs and, similar to the previous weekend, we found ourselves at a festival eating brats and turkey legs.

After that, we got back on task and consulted our handy Colorado Guide for direction. We debated over going to the Garden of the Gods mid-day on a Saturday, then headed to North Cheyenne Canyon Park, just southwest of Colorado Springs.

This place is awesome! Unlike the other places we have been, this place has woods! It was HOT that day and it seemed like the trees were trapping the heat. There were dry riverbeds and trails that went up up up. Anne was sure there was poison oak all along the trail and Mike was sure she was crazy. Mike was right. It turned out to be scrub oak. Nothing dangerous.

The views were fantastic! We even caught a little Wild Kingdom action as a squirrel and hummingbird duked it out over something. Everything was so dry, the trail was basically loose dirt and chunks of granite. Though it was a short hike, it was steep and took a lot out of us.

Hiking in Castlewood Canyon

Hiking is totally different here. So far we’ve been to two state parks, Castlewood Canyon and Roxborough.

There is so much rock and sand that there is very little mud.

Some places let you climb on the rocks, and some don’t.

We also have a whole new set of flora and fauna to learn. And we better do it quick. Just yesterday we stumbled upon a rather unhappy bull snake. Let me rephrase… a BIG and unhappy bull snake. These guys are not poisonous, but that doesn’t make them friendly by any means.

He wouldn’t budge. You’ll see in the photo below that he was on a narrow set of stairs. It happened to be the only way out of the park, unless we wanted to go another 2 miles back the other way. We thought we’d wait him out, you know, let him go along his merry way, but his merry way was sitting on those stairs, ready to strike. Having been lax in practicing our Crocodile Hunter snake capture skills, we were slightly baffled on how to end this encounter. Somehow the snake and Mike and Anne all felt cornered.

Luckily a guy with a stick coming down the stairs eventually removed the snake from our path. Phew!

Check out Roxborough State Park.

Hiking in Roxborough State Park

This is actually the first place we found. It is about 45 minutes southwest of where we live. It is amazing how quickly one can leave a major city and be able to see miles and miles of flat nothing and beautiful mountains. We took a photo of Denver off in the distance, but it was really to hazy to post online.

The rock formations here are more then 1.2 billion years old and produce microclimates. How cool it that? 

You’re not allowed to climb on the rocks here because they’re actually pretty fragile. I’m no rock genius, but I think they’re a form of sandstone. 

These pictures don’t show how red the rocks really are. They’re similar to the ones that form Red Rocks Amphitheater… a place we’ll be going soon. 

We saw some huge birds of prey circling above and believe it or not, in this middle of all of this sand and stone, there was a little grassy wetland that harbored frogs. 

The Move

Thank you Dustin, MIke, John, Bummy, Ray, and P for all of your help loading our entire house into this glorious yellow truck.

And super mega thanks to Margaret and Brad who hauled our arses across the country! (FYI, Brad drove the truck all 1500 miles while Mike ate candy and looked out the window. Brad, we owe you big!)

You know you know good people when they volunteer to help you move with only beer and pizza in return.

Pennsylvania
All morning the rain clouds loomed black over Mattern Ave, but with everybody’s help, the truck was loaded just before the big drops started falling.

This is our last look at the I-79 interchange on Parkway West… would you believe there were 6 miles of construction?

Ohio
Unfortunately, there was nothing photoworthy in Ohio. Sorry all you people who like the state. It is really quite dull. In fact, Kansas has better scenery… oooh ouch.

But you can see the kickass cat safety belt system in the back seat of the Kia. We’ve got cotton rope and aluminum clips attached to a cat harness. It worked well, as we had no CATastrophies… ba dum bum…

Indiana
By Indiana, we were a little punchy.

We had packed the truck by 2:00pm and were driving for the past 9 hours.

We rolled into our hotel in Terre Haute at 11:00pm eastern, 10:00pm central time. Did you know that Terre Haute, Indiana happened to be host of a major bowling tournament on April 30? Oh we sure did.

As it turned out, the only room in town (at a truck-friendly hotel) was a smoking king with a pull-out sofa. Lucky Mike slept in the King with the girls while poor Brad slept on the floor with the mattress from the sofa.

We had hopes of taking a dip before bed, but the 3 dozen (surprisingly well-behaved) children in the pool and the shady people in the hot tub convinced us otherwise. Also, Mike and Anne realized that their bathingsuits were in the truck about 16 feet from the from the door and inside of dresser drawers that had been carefully stabelized by Anne’s dad with about 385 cubic feet of boxes. It was also at this time that Anne realized that was also the approximate location of her toothbrush…

Illinois
Illinois was beautiful. The sun was out and the travelling was good. Nothing but open road and loads of farm land.

If any of you have seen the movie “Gummo,” you’ll start to understand why those people were feeding glass to cats for fun… To those of you who have not seen the movie, I don’t suggest you do.

And for those of you who always wondered why Bob Ross puts those broken down sheds in all of his paintings, my hypothesis: he loves Illinois.

Missouri
Our Welcome to Missouri was this cool view of St. Louis. Rt 70 goes right through St. Louis the way Parkway East and West do Pittsburgh, only actually more complicated. There was plenty of merging and and traffic dodging to do.

Overall, it looked like a cool city.
Of course, after St. Louis, there was nothing.

Except for a bunch of weird highway signs for routes named after letters… what’s up with that?

You know you’re in the boonies when you see a Boonville watertower.

So we kept on truckin’.

Kansas
We were dreading this part of the trip. If you look at a map of Kansas, you’ll find one city, Kansas City. And even Kansas City is trying so hard to get out of Kansas that 1/2 of it is in Missouri. As it turns out, Kansas is pretty neat.

We saw the most interesting landscape of the trip in eastern Kansas. There were so many little hills and valleys, and yet, we could still see for miles on end.

But hold on to your goats–there were at least 25 signs for adult stores just along I-70.

Here’s Topeka… as well as the last of the civilization we saw for a long long long time.

We were halfway through the state by afternoon on our second day and making such good time, we figured we could keep driving. The problem was, Kansas ran out of cities before we ran out of stamina.

So we called for backup. Thanks to the swift e-searching by Anne & Margaret’s parents, we were able to find a bunch of hotel vacancies in Hays, KS.

The town was a small dot on the map, but proved to have everything we needed.

Hays, KS
oh baby it’s taco time! After passing several appetizing options of seafood and chinese food buffets (in the middle of landlocked corn country, mind you), we found ourselves at the Taco Shop. The 12 block drive between our Days Inn and the Taco Shop were Mike’s first and last official legs of the trip. Congratulations Mike!
After a long day of driving, Margaret was excited to order a vegetable burrito. Unfortunately, it consisted completely of refried beans and lettuce… yum? Brad ordered us chips and con queso to share and the cheese (which was only slightly thicker than tomato juice) tasted eerily like the Hempfield Band sub cheese.

Then it was back to the room for beer!

The next morning, as Mike transported the cat carrier back to the truck, Anne was searching for her car keys. The keys were found, conveniently in Mike’s pocket. We were totally ready for our shortest driving day of 5 hours to Denver.

Colorado
Wahoo! We finally crossed the Colorado state border! Only 2 more hours to go!

At this point, we’ve driven for 2 days and 3 hours. Mike has paid about $450 in diesel fuel (yikes!). Maceo has stopped trying to climb into the driver’s seat. And we’re all impressed at how smooth the trip has been.
We arrived at 2:00 pm mtn time on Monday.

Our new landlord had blocked off our side of the street so that we could park easily and gave us a bottle of wine too. How nice!

Aunt Marcia and Uncle Tim came over to welcome us to our new home (with a shower curtain, as per my request) and to heft some boxes.
Thank you!

After Mike came back from taking Brad home, we cleared off space on the loveseat and had a beer. We were asleep shortly thereafter.

The next day we squeezed ourselves around the stacks of boxes and started getting settled.

Here we are at the end of a long trip, but it is only the beginning!