Seeing more of Colorado
Day 7 (afternoon): Bye to friends… Hello, Colorado Springs!
After dropping Dennis and Martin off at the airport, we spent some time in Denver for window shopping. We also went to Littleton, to meet Alex’s cousin and his husband for brunch at Cafe Terracotta. Alex’s cousin is also a geriatrician, so it was nice for her to catch up with him and talk about their work woes. The food was really good; we all ordered the lemon ricotta pancakes, except for Alex. She had felt deprived of vegetables for the week and ordered the cobb salad (which she said she very much enjoyed).
In the afternoon we drove down to Colorado Springs to visit the Garden of the Gods. It’s a set of orange sandstone formations that, to me, resembled the back of a spinosaurous. They are very striking and feel like a piece of the Utah desert is rising up from the Colorado landscape. It’s a good reminder that states are just lines on a map, and geologic features that define a state are often still found in neighboring areas. We ended up hiking about 6 miles around the area, avoiding the abundant horse droppings. The amount of it surprised us, even though Alex had read a few reviews complaining about it! Our day ended at the Villa Motel in Manitou Springs with a shower, takeout Chinese food, and a more comfortable bed than I had slept on since we had arrived in Colorado.
Day 8: A change in plans
Sunday started with Alex’s Garmin training readiness still sitting at 1, but she had her eyes on a hike and wanted to push on. We ate breakfast in town at a small local place that based on the sign outside it looked like it was closing in a few weeks. It’s a real shame, because it had a lot of personality and the food was delicious! We shared a breakfast burrito and fried french toast. One of the perks of all the hiking is being able to eat fried french toast and have zero worries about the calories! We settled on doing the Mt. Muscoco trail. A 4-mile hike with about 1,300 feet of elevation gain with great views of Colorado Springs, valleys and mountains. Alex started off with a pep in her step, but as we kept going I could tell the accumulated fatigue from sickness and poor sleep was getting to her. Props to her for pressing on, but I tried to keep encouraging her that a rest day would be good. We slowly and steadily made our way up, but on the way down Alex caught a second wind, and she was jogging again. On smooth terrain, it does feel nice to run downhill.
Originally, we planned on heading to the Great Sand Dunes National Park to camp among the dunes. We were prepared with our reservation and had packed our camping setup. However, mother nature had other plans. It was scheduled to rain, which is not a common occurrence since it’s a desert! Looking back, they ended up getting 2.67” of rain that night! Good thing we changed our plans and drove to Breckenridge for a different adventure.
I had been to Breckenridge on a family ski trip around 2002, so I knew the downtown area was nice and would make for a good place to have a slow, relaxing day. It’s a beautiful area, and I hope we have time in the future to go back and do some hiking (or skiing if Alex ever gets interested in trying). We arrived in the evening and went straight to the store to grab ingredients to make nachos with the huge bag of leftover Costco tortilla chips. We actually were lugging around a cardboard box filled with a very random assortment of food items left from the week in Estes Park. After eating way too many nachos, we walked around town and ate ice cream next to a really nice outdoor gas fireplace. It’s a good thing for the fire too, because Breckenridge sits at 9,600 feet elevation and eating ice cream with the temperature in the 30s is cold!
Day 9: Breckenridge
On Monday morning, we walked around downtown Breckenridge with the temperature in the 20s, but coffee and hot chocolate helped warm us up as we browsed the various shops. Alex bought a souvenir T-shirt, as she liked the design of the various ski resorts on the back of it. I was excited to see I had been to almost all the ski resorts on the shirt! After I got a nice Colorado magnet to add to my fridge collection, it was time to drive back towards the front range to Longmont.
We got to Longmont by late afternoon and decided to walk around after being in the car for several hours. We found a 3-mile loop surrounding Lake McIntosh. It was beautiful! Our walk around the lake included a gorgeous sunset with the mountains as a backdrop, and unexpectedly, hundreds of prairie dogs! Everywhere we looked there were prairie dogs poking up out of holes in the ground!
Day 10: Boulder and Brews
On our last full day in Colorado, we spent some time in Boulder. We started the morning with a hike up the iconic Flatirons. They look like 1,400 foot tall stone pyramids with one of its sides poking out of the mountain. We saw someone free climbing up the face of one, but the main hiking trail is a steep 3.2 mile out-and-back trail between two of the flatirons. It’s mostly incline hiking, but there were a few mild rock scrambling sections. I really enjoyed the times when you were able to look across the slope of one flatiron and see a neighboring one in the same view. The angle of the giant rock slabs created a striking visual
In the afternoon, we went to downtown Boulder for lunch. We ate at an Asian restaurant called Zoe Mama, which had delicious noodle dishes. I couldn’t help grabbing a Häagen-Daz ice cream later for dessert. We ended up roaming around the area for about four hours. Alex enjoys window shopping, and I enjoy Alex, so a good time was had by all! There were numerous souvenir and outdoor gear shops. We enjoy the towns that have all the outdoor clothing and equipment shops that we can usually only find online.
Our evening was spent at a local cidery in Longmont. Cider was really popular 10 years ago, but now it’s more difficult to find a place that has many ciders options. This place had over 20 ciders on tap, plus a variety of meads as well. The barrel-aged mead I had was one of the best things I’ve ever drank. The cidery was located in a quiet area, and it was a really nice place to sit and relax outside for a little bit.
Day 11: Red Rocks Amphitheater
Today was our final day in Colorado! Neither Alex, nor I are huge music buffs, but Red Rocks Amphitheatre is one of those places you always hear about. It’s a series of sandstone rocks on a hillside that form a natural amphitheatre big enough for 9,000 people. It was about an hour from where we were staying and our flight didn’t leave until the evening, so we figured we would go check it out. We spent the drive talking about life plans and mapping out some possibilities for the next few years. There was also going to be a pressed penny machine at Red Rocks, so Alex was excited about that!
When we got to the visitor’s center, Alex was disappointed to discover that the pressed penny machine was broken. We spent the next few minutes walking around the exhibits that give you a bit of background on the site, and bands that have played there over the years. The first documented performance at the site dates all the way back to 1906! The area was purchased by the city of Denver in 1927 and has been operated as a city park ever since.
I’ll preface this by saying Alex and I are not massively into music, but we were a bit underwhelmed and thought it felt a little bit more artificial than we were expecting. I think seeing a show here at night would likely be incredibly cool, but in the daytime with the big metal stage roof, surrounded by concrete everywhere and brick - it crossed into the uncanny valley. The massive rock formations are obviously all real; it’s a very functional, unique, and modern concert venue, but I found myself wishing it had kept a little bit more of a gritty and grounded feel.
Alex and I headed back to Denver for lunch and to walk around downtown before heading to the airport. We stopped at the Colorado Rockies stadium store to check out their pressed penny machine, but it was broken as well! Luckily, the guy had some in the register and gave Alex one for free. He seemed slightly amused at how excited a 38 year old woman was at the prospect of a free pressed penny! Our spirits lifted, we tried an Indian-Mediterranean-American fusion restaurant for lunch. I would have never imagined a tikka masala calzone existed, but now I know that it does, and it’s delicious! We also shared a mouth-numbing basket of fries seasoned with sichuan peppercorns. Then it was off to the massive Denver airport. Thankfully, our travels back home were uneventful.