Rocky Mountain High...Colorado

Jeff and I were able to celebrate our 20th anniversary in Colorado. Neither one of us had ever been and Brad needed a way to get there, so we packed up a 2010 bright red HHR (rental) and headed to Denver.

Jeff LOVED driving the HHR - he was in heaven! It was a nice car too...and it averaged 31 mpg. We may be getting one soon! :)
The drive was beautiful! Snow capped mountains the whole way! (See first picture)

Brad missed all of the beautiful drive...because he was sleeping. He had attended his Senior "all nighter" the night before and didn't get home until 5:30 am.

We drove right to Brad's apartment (you can see pictures here) and got him all settled. Then we headed to our hotel and this is what we saw when we walked in

We were hungry for "real" food after eating "car" food all day so we drove across the street to see what we could see. The only thing open (at 9 p.m.) was a little asian restuarant, so we ate there (picture later)

Day 1 was downtown Denver - specifically thy 16th street mall and the Denver Temple.

The 16th street mall is a one mile long section of town with shops on both sides of the street and lots of fun things down the middle of the street.

There are concrete chess tables cemented to the street where people just sit and play chess.

There are some pretty cool pianos that have been painted just sitting in the middle of the street - anyone can just sit down and play. Some people are really good!!

There are some pretty cool sculptures - we saw them everywhere!

We ate lunch at this taco vendor - we couldn't go wrong - he had a money back guarantee!

We also did a little shopping while we were at the mall and I bought a skirt and shirt so we could go to the temple.

Day two was FULL of fun!

We started out by driving to Colorado Springs (about 60 miles south) and we headed straight for
The Garden of the Gods

It reminded me a lot of our sand dunes and Zions. It was a beautiful day (90+degrees).

This formation is called "siamese twins". It was a one mile hike in and about a 3 mile hike out...Jeff navigated us right into a diferent trail that was the opposite direction of where we were supposed to be going. Good thing we weren't in a hurry!

When we FINALLY made it back to our car, we drove about a mile to the next formation called "balance rock"

We stopped to eat lunch at one of the gift shops/restaurants - Jeff ordered a Buffalo Burger and I had a BLT.

After lunch, we headed to the Julie Penrose fountain

You can read about the sculpture here

Then we headed to Seven Falls.

It's a HUGE waterfall that holds seven smaller falls - it's beautiful!

Its so big, that you can take the elevator up (which we did)

and then take the stairs down

There are about 224 stairs per flight and there are six flights - that's a LOT of stairs!!

We left Colorado Springs and headed back to Denver to catch the Colorado Rockies vs. LA Dodgers baseball game.

We ate baseball food (a foot long hot dog and nachos) and we had a great time!!

We were exhausted when we finally got back to our hotel!

Day three, Saturday, we were headed home. We wanted to stop at a few places to shop and sight see, so we knew it would be a long day! We stopped in Vail, in Eden (we shopped for a couple of hours at an outlet mall) and in Idaho Springs (for some pizza at Beau Jo's). But the best stop was Glenwood Springs. We stopped at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. We rode a tram 4,300 feet up in the air to get to the top.

It was pretty scary on the way up - there was a lot of wind and our car was swinging everytime they would stop to let someone off or on. Jeff was pretty nervous!! He's not a fan of heights, especially when he's blowing around in the wind about 3,000 feet off the ground!

Once you get to the top, they have a huge Alpine Coaster, laser tag, a maze, rock climbing wall, a mechanical bull and (I saved the best for last) a GIANT swing.

Jeff and I already have plans to bring the kids here for Spring Break next year...it's going to be a blast!

It was a fun, busy trip and I'm glad we had the opportunity to see some fun new things!

We're looking forward to another 20 years together!!