First Stop, Estes Park

Do you remember in the last post how I told you I made Jeremy book us separate flights for our trip to Denver?  Well after we checked our luggage in (on our separate flights) we said good bye and headed to our gates.  The Southwest Airlines man politely told me that my flight would be delayed at least an hour due to a hydraulic leak on the plane.  What the Heck!! All I could think of was, "There is know way I am getting on a plane that is headed to the hanger to be worked on!" I frantically called Jeremy and headed over to his gate (which happened to be on the other side of the airport).  I got there just as he was boarding and somehow ended up flying stand bye on his flight.  I literally was sick to my stomach the whole flight!  I kept thinking, "This is a sign, this is how we are going to go down together and our kids are going to be parent less and my house is a mess cause we had to be at the airport at 6:00 in the morning! I have laundry all over the place and no one will even be able to find our will!" My mind was racing. Well, the plane didn't go down and we made it safely but ended up spending about 2 hours at the Denver International Airport waiting on my luggage that was on the other flight that was totally delayed! We laughed and joked about it (funny how we can joke about it AFTER we had arrived safely!) When the luggage finally arrived we jumped in our rental car and headed to Broomfield where we were staying.  

We checked in, changed clothes and drove into Boulder (which was about 10 minutes) away for dinner.  We had a great dinner but didn't really know what to do from there.  We had lots of ideas but without any crying kids to determine our evening, we walked around and saw a little of Boulder.  It was beautiful, however since we were in Buffalo country and it was parent's weekend at the University, we decided to head to our hotel room and call it a night! We did end up back in Boulder on Sunday also but spent most of our day walking down beautiful Pearl Street with the rest of the town.  Boulder was so awesome!  There was snow on the Rocky Mountains and fall leaves everywhere around us. I  love Colorado!

On Friday morning we rolled out of bed (remember, no kids to wake us up at the crack of dawn!) and headed up to Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Forest.  The last time I was in Estes Park was Mother's Day 1996 when my parents came out to Colorado for my graduation.  As we pulled into town, this big guy was standing on the side of the road.  I really thought Jeremy was gonna cry!  He took about 800 pictures including this one:

I'm so thankful he didn't have his gun or we'd be trying to figure our how to get an elk on the airplane back to Arizona! We walked up and down Main Street in Estes Park and at lunch at a place called Wapiti.  Do you even know what a Wapiti is?  Science lesson for the day:  Wapiti:  The white coloring on an Elk's rump.  There you have it, everything you've always wanted to know about an elk but were afraid to ask! After lunch we headed to the best ice cream shop in town called Laura's.  Here is just a small sample of what was going on there!  

After filling up on the best homemade ice cream ever, we jumped back in our really cool rental car and headed up to the Rocky Mountain National Forest.  After a $20.00 admission, we took off up the mountain to look for wildlife.  We saw another elk and some very pretty views but that was about it. It was well worth the money!  After our day in Estes park, we went back to Broomfield, changed our clothes, and headed to downtown Denver.  Let me just tell you...downtown Denver ROCKS!  It is so pretty and so happening!  There were people walking all around enjoying the weather and nightlife.  We at dinner at this awesome restaurant called Vesta.  It was dang good!  We then walked a few blocks to Larimer Square.  I fell in love with this block of downtown.  There were white lights hanging across all the streets and trees.  Every restaurant in Larimer Square was packed with people dining outside.  The shopping was incredible, Oh I was so happy being there! 

Larimer Square.

So as you can see we had a great first day in Colorado!  We missed our kids terribly but were enjoying our time together.  Up next...Fort Collins baby!!