No Fair! (posted by Lani)

You posted while I was posting! No fair, I wanted to be first!

Love Don's pictures, it sucks that you lost ANOTHER housekeeper (what do you DO to them? Seriously!) And your trip sounds like you were able to squeeze in a bit of fun. I'm glad you got to do some enjoyable stuff, and I wish I'd been able to join you but ... hey, it's honestly not like I've been lazing around since my last post. I've been busy. Not busy working (although I did work a smidgen at the beginning of the month); no, I've been busy having fun!

Steve and I headed out to Colorado on the 15th for a week of fun and relaxation. Oh fine, so he had to work two of the days we were there; I had fun and relaxed, and really isn't that what counts? We flew in on Sunday; sadly our bags flew in on Monday. Whoopsie! No big deal though, they actually arrived in the wee hours of Monday morning so when we woke up on Monday we had luggage and all was well. The first 3 days we stayed at the Omni Interlocken Resort in Interlocken (between Denver and Boulder); very nice hotel. Unusually for hotels these days, the nicest thing about this one was the staff. I seriously have never, ever stayed at a place where the staff was uniformly so helpful and eager to please. Denver is, well, it's a city. A nice city, but a city.

Boulder, now, was awesome. I had tons of fun wandering in and around Boulder, shopping in the pedestrian mall and driving out to Nederland and Gold Hill. I will say that the roads in the mountains are, um, interesting; the "highway" to Gold Hill starts out as a two-lane paved road and about halfway there turns into a dirt road. No guardrails, no nothing, a dirt road winding through the mountains. I consoled myself that once I reached Gold Hill I'd be turning onto another road and this one would surely be paved -- uh, not. The road out of Gold Hill was basically a one-lane dirt road. Interesting. Scenic. Glad I'm not driving them in winter. I took pictures ... but NOT on the scary part of the road, because, well, it was scary.

Steve finished his meetings in Boulder on Wednesday and off we went to Estes Park, to a B&B I'd booked online. Yes, I was totally crossing my fingers that it wouldn't turn out to be a hole. Yes, crossing your fingers works sometimes! We stayed at A Mountain Valley Home, if you're wondering ;) It was in a residential type neighborhood but a quiet one, with gorgeous views and herds of elk and deer wandering through the yard, and Paul and Lynn, our host and hostess, were fantastic. They have 5 rooms and the first night there were two other couples (one honeymoon, one anniversary ... it's just like that!); the second night we were the only ones there, it pays to travel midweek! Lynn made sure that everything was just what we wanted, made us dinner reservations, etc.; Paul cooked decadent breakfasts for us each morning; our room was both lovely and totally comfortable; and the entire experience was delightful.

Sadly we were really there too early in the season to be able to get into most of the Rocky Mountain National Park, but we did rent horses (and a guide, thankyouverymuch, mountain riding isn't something I've done before) and rode up into the mountains around Estes Park for several hours one day:








We rode up, and up, and further up ... it was beautiful. And yes, all of these pictures were taken on our ride. And yes ... we were both sore afterwards, but it was so worth it.


















The next day, although we were both sitting and walking a little gingerly, we drove all through the open parts of the national park and did a couple of short hikes on the few open trails that were accessible sans snowshoes. We saw elk! bighorn sheep! eagles! redtailed hawks! and ... beauty.


I hated to come home. I really did. But home we came -- and I had two days at home, during which I slept almost the entire first day and gardened like a maniac on the second, and then I was off to Florida! But that's another post entirely.