Road Trip Recap

I finally got around to uploading photos from my road trip to Colorado from last month. Although I took over 500 pictures during the trip, I only put about 100 of them on SmugMug. Didn't want y'all to get bored. Anywhoo, the trip was excellent. Barry and I took off on Friday around one, and made it to Rapid City around 10. We spent a first memorable night at the historical Hotel Alex Johnson, which has been around since 1927 (and I believe has been updated about twice since then). We also visited Dinosaur Park which I hadn't seen since I was little bitty. Saturday we toured the town, walked around the lake there and visited with 3209 ducks, geese and other assorted birds. Then we took off for Mount Rushmore. I hadn't been there for ten years or so and things are a bit more exciting. Now you can take this little path right up under the mountain. So many more photo ops. Loved it. Then we went over to Crazy Horse but didn't want to shell out the dough to go in (not that it isn't cool, but we didn't have much time). Then we headed drove through the Black Hills National Forest and made our way to Newcastle, Wyoming. I think we counted about 87 deer on the way (that figure is not exaggerated). From there, we drove down Wyoming, saw even more deer (but I fell asleep somewhere in there), and we ate dinner at a lovely truck stop buffet in Cheyenne. From there, we continued south to Denver, and finally arrived in Colorado Springs around 11. LONG day. Barry's brother lives there, so we spent the next several days around there.

While in Colorado Springs, we: had a fabulous brunch at the Sunbird, drove around the Broadmoor (it is ten times bigger now!), saw Garden of the Gods, took the Cog Railway to the top of Pikes Peak (and ate a donut), went to Helen Hunt Falls (not the actress...although I wonder if she's been there?), saw the U. S. Olympic Training Center and U.S. Air Force Academy by car, and a heck of a lot of turquoise houses.

One day we decided to take a little trip into the mountains. Barry made us a reservation for a cute little hotel in Dillon, right next to the lake/reservoir there (according to the map we should have had an incredible view...but unfortunately there was a big dam in the way). We toured around Dillon, then went over to Breckenridge for dinner. I ate the WORLD'S BEST onion rings at Downstairs at Eric's. YUM.

The next day we drove into Denver where we met Barry's highschool friend for lunch. Then we just walked around downtown, looked in shops, enjoyed the weather. We took the long way out of town so we could stop by Stapleton, this way-cool new huge housing development where the old airport used to be. After that, we went to Ed & Audrey's to visit with them and their ENTIRE family who stopped by for dinner and to see us. I hadn't been to their house in 5 years or so, nevertheless seen a lot of my cousins and second cousins since then (there are a LOT of them!)...or even met the tiniest ones. We had a great night over there.

Thanksgiving was spent with Barry's family, at his brother's house where we were staying. The meal was delicious and everything looked great. I even stepped up and made a couple pumpkin pies. Oh, and the Thanksgiving Fairy saved the day when it magically provided us with more buns at Walmart that morning.....so thankfully Barry didn't ruin Thanksgiving AGAIN.

Black Friday we went shopping at the Apple store in Colorado Springs, ate lunch at Fatburger, then took off that afternoon to make our way back to MN. We stopped for the night in Salina, KS, then toured the whole city the next day looking for the replica of the Statue of Liberty in addition to eating at the IHOP. Late that afternoon we landed in Kansas City. I was super excited to go there for some reason....the design blogs I read seem to export a lot of good design from that city. We stayed at the Westin Crown Center (crown as in Hallmark...get it?), where our room overlooked the fountains, huge Christmas tree and ice skating rink. GORGEOUS. It was snowing by then, so everything was so Christmasy and beautiful. I loved it. We walked around the mall there, then took the link (skyway) over to Union Station, which was just huge and gorgeous and dark and filled with glowing Christmas trees. Finally, we ate a fabulous steak dinner atop the Westin at Benton's Steak & Chop House. YUM. Just yum.

We left Sunday morning for home, but the weather got pretty nasty towards Des Moines. I was all "ptsch, this is nothing" until 10 cars spun out RIGHT in front of us and a U-Haul was turned over and I saw a car totally fall apart and a lady laying on the side of the road. SCARY. So we got an excellent last minute deal through Priceline at a hotel there and came back to MN the next morning.

SO how about that? 11 days, 7 states (none of which were Nebraska...yay!) and 2500 miles and I seriously think I remembered all the highlights. Go me. Now you can go to my smugmug and look at all the photos. ;)