8/13/2011 Mini Hollins Reunion

When I was editor of the Hollins Columns my junior year in college, Susan Bright was a talented first year student who joined the staff. By second semester, she was my features editor. With a name like Susan "Bright" how could she be anything but my "Star Reporter"? Well now she lives in Lafayette, CO, so I borrowed Rodney's car (after dropping him off at work) and drove to Lafayette. Bonus! Rebecca de la Vega lives near Susan and they're in the same band, Stubborn Gray, as well as the same church praise music group. Rebecca was hosting a cookout and jam session so that's where I went. It was great to get the Hollins gang together again! Rebecca actually graduated from Texas Women's University which is right next door to my second alma mater, North Texas. Small world!

Susan and her partner Kathy Rosser:

8/13/2011 Water Woes at the House

Dain's parents were here while I was here. They live about 90 minutes away and often stop in and visit and help with the kids and help with the house. His mom had JUST finished doing some gardening in the newly sodded front yard when they saw water coming up from the city water works cover in their driveway. Oooops. There goes the new gardening. Look how deep the hole is!! They found a big split in the water pipe. Shoveling and digging and sweating is not exactly how one would like to spend a beautiful summer day. :-(

8/12/2011 Water Park

It was Friday afternoon and Dain and Rodney were doing things, so Sara and I took the boys to the local water park. This is in a big city park just a few miles from the house in Aurora. And there's also a big covered picnic table area and a really nice playground. After playing in the water, we went to the playground for some more fun before dinner.

8/11/11 Trail Ridge Road

After Alpine Visitor Center, we took the Trail Ridge Road (only open Memorial Day to Columbus Day) back to Estes Park. The road reaches a high of over 12,000 feet.

Trying out my app called "Pano" that lets you create your own panoramic photos. (You have to manually align the pics, but it merges them into one .jpg like this.) Somewhere out there is a mountain range called Never Summer Mountains and in it are Mount Cumulus, Mount Cirrus, Mount Nimbus, and Mount Stratus. Well named.

Lava Cliffs

I think this is a Clark's Nuthatch. Whatever it is, it was awfully cute and didn't mind posing for this photo.

We left the park around 5:00 and ate dinner at Village Inn. What a glorious day!

8/11/11 Old Fall River Road

We found the webpage "Rocky in a Day" that suggested what to see and do if you only had one day in RMNP. Since we didn't arrive until noon, we had to shorten that to "if you only had half a day," but we took this author's advice and weren't disappointed.

We skipped some of the stops after Bear Lake and headed straight to Old Fall River Road. It is 9 miles of one-lane, narrow, dirt road filled with switchbacks . . . totally worth it! Built in 1913, it was the first road to cross the Rockies in northern Colorado. Rodney said it was like driving on Mount Washington in New Hampshire only more so. Think of your skinniest road next to ledges with big drop offs and you've got a good picture of Old Fall River Road.

Yep. It's this treacherous most of the way. Pretty scary but soooo gorgeous.

The road climbed and climbed . . . lots of switchbacks . . . and pretty soon, we were above the tree line.

The Alpine Visitor Center is at the end of Old Fall River Road and its elevation is 11,798 feet. It's closed more often than its open due to snow.

8/11/11 Rocky Mountain National Park

Today: Rocky Mountain National Park! It just takes a smidge under two hours to get here from Aurora. This is The Stanley, a famous hotel in Estes Park, right before you get to RMNP. The Shining was filmed here, but there's a lot more history than that in this old classic.

It was a pretty popular day in RMNP. We went in the Beavers Meadow Entrance. The traffic wasn't too bad, but the parking was, so we took a shuttle and very soon thereafter, we were at Bear Lake. It's a pretty simple half-mile hike around the lake, but it packs a lot of scenery in a short time.

Bear Lake in front, Longs Peak (the mountain on the Colorado state quarter) in the back along with Keyboard of the Winds (the jaggedy part) and then Pagoda Peak. I don't know the names of the other 3 points, but they're all beautiful to look at.

Good parking karma--we got the #1 spot in a fairly full lot, very close to where the shuttle pick-up is located. (Here we are returning to our car.)

At the Horseshoe Park overlook:

8/10/11 New Scenery

You'd think the scenery would be the same both ways on this train trip, but we were seeing it at different times of day and there were parts that we didn't sleep through this time. It all looked new and beautiful.

Soon it was too dark to see any scenery. We watched part of a movie on Rodney's iPad and took a nap before finally arriving in Denver at 11:30pm.

8/10/11 Private Rail Car

We had the unique privilege of having a private railroad car on our train. See the last car? That's it. It is not an Amtrak car but rather a train car owned by someone who pays Amtrak to carry it around from place to place (like hiring a freight train to transport your goods). How cool is that??? It felt like the original television show "The Wild Wild West." James West and Artemus Gordon (why on earth do I remember those names) were always meeting someone or capturing someone in their private rail car. We never did find out who owned the car (or who rented the car . . . turns out there are several companies that rent out private rail cars).

8/10/11 Glenwood Springs' Train Station

The train station in Glenwood Springs, built in 1904, is in the heart of downtown.

Not much has changed since 1904 . . . check out the ticket windows

...and the waiting area in this classic train station.

The Train! The Train! Only 5 hours late, the train finally arrives at that cute little train station in Glenwood Springs.

8/10/11 Late Lunch

We finished our Segue tour at 3:00, then checked on our train which was now scheduled to depart at 5:00. The nice lady at the ticket counter told us to be back at 4:30. Perfect! We stopped back at Hotel Denver to ask Roxie the desk clerk for her recommendation for lunch. She said: The Grind restaurant. You have to learn about it from a local as it's a smidge off the beaten path and has no signage on the outside. 

It's a skinny little structure, a row of tables to seat 12 on each side as you walk in the door with a bench against the wall and chairs on the inside, the counter for taking orders and serving drinks in the middle, and the kitchen in the back. A cow theme for decorations. A simple menu with about 8 choices and a pad of checklists with all the ingredients available and you can design your own burger. That's it. Simple and delicious.

I made my own burger: lamb, fetta cheese, peach/apple compote, and grilled pineapple. Oh yummy!

Aaaah! There was even time to stop at The Chocolate Moose Ice Cream Parlor which was closed the first time we were in the mood for ice cream.

Can you say hot fudge sundae?

8/10/11 Segway Tour of Town

What do you do when you find out your train is going to be five hours late? Take a 90-minute Segway tour of Glenwood Springs! What else!! Little did I know what I was in for when 2 days ago I declared this trip an adventure. Rodney volunteered to go first and was a natural at it.

We had a lot of lessons in the parking lot before we left. Rick, our tour guide extraordinaire, made sure we could go fast, go slow, come to a complete stop, maneuver tight turns, and go over bumps with the left tire only, the right tire only, and both tires. After about 15 minutes, the 5 of us were ready to go--Rick, Rodney, me, and Amy & Tom a newlywed couple from Omaha NE who came to Glenwood Springs for their honeymoon.

We had a vote and we all voted for the more adventuresome tour that went to the top of the mountain. We actually rode Segways UP the mountain! We were on gravel roads, skinny paths, switchbacks . . . it was quite the challenge with a big reward at the end.

Here are our little ponies tied up at the corral while we take a respite at the top and enjoy the scenery. Pictured are Amy and Rick (seated on the bench).

8/10/11 Morning in Glenwood Springs

Morning sunshine smiling on downtown Glenwood Springs (as viewed from our hotel room window....can you tell we love the room and the view).

Breakfast on the patio of Daily Bread Restaurant.

Vegetarian eggs benedict made with all locally grown veggies. I paid extra for a side of avocado because it was going to be real avocado. You can't get good avocado in Maine.

Ron Chapman, my favorite DJ in Dallas, always said, "There's never a sign without a story." In this case, it would be a series of signs and I was dying to know the story, but we never found out. There were, however, three more such signs with the same message in other locations in the store. It must be quite a story.

A glimpse of downtown Glenwood Springs

It's hard to see in this photo, but this mountain is filled with dead trees. There are currently issues with Aspen, but we saw a lot of dead pine, too. Not sure what tree it is in this photo, but they are definitely dead trees. This morning we took the free shuttle that goes through Glenwood Springs. It gave us a nice feel for the lay of the land.

Hmmmmm. Interesting.