Roarin' Through the Rockies Day 1 & 2

I'm combining the first two days, because the technical first day was just the flight into Denver. During the flight, I was speaking to the guy next to me. I told him about the route I was going to take, and he made a suggestion to go through Boulder on the way up to Estes. I'm glad we did. To start off with, the flight was uneventful. We made it into Denver with no problem. After getting our luggage, we went to get the rental car. I had originally reserved a midsize car. When I went to the lot to get it, I asked which had the most trunk space, since we all had our own suitcase, and a couple of carry-ons. The person told me to get the Dodge Caliber, since it was a hatchback. Well, I pulled it around to put the stuff in there, and it couldn't even fit the two big suitcases. I then went inside to get a bigger car, well, we ended up with a Chevy Tahoe.

The hotel was just outside of the airport. We had dinner at Ted's Montana Grill. Brenda's steak was really good, and I entered the clean plate club with the Bison meatloaf. Needless to say, we may go back there when we get back to Denver next Saturday.

After we got up and had breakfast, we went to go pick up the bike. I knew I had to get new rain gear, which I did (and will probably pretty much guarantee it's not going to rain). I also got a new jacket. The jacket can be used in cold or warm weather as it has a removable liner. I got the bike, and headed out to Boulder. We stopped and went to the Pearl Street Mall, and had a really good sandwich at snarfs. After lunch we walked around the mall a bit, then took off towards Estes Park. We both enjoyed our first taste of mountain roads, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and beyond. In a way, it's sort of like being on a roller coaster that you control.

After getting into Estes and checking into the hotel, we went for a ride on the Estes Park Aerial Tramway, where we were able to feed chipmunks peanuts by hand. After the tramway, we had a B-B-Q dinner at Smokin' Dave's. The St. Louis ribs were really good, the Bison baby back ribs were a little tough and not very meaty. Although there is a rodeo in town, we decided to just come back to the room and relax.

I've had a headache today, and I'm not sure if it's from a lack of caffeine, or if it's the altitude. A couple of Tylenol seems to have helped.

Tomorrow it's a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel, the ride into Winter Park, then "Kid's Night Out" where Brenda and I can have dinner together while the kids do activities and make S'mores.

Here are some pictures: