On July 14th, at 7:58PM Central Standard Time my dad and I left for Colorado with the intent of spending as little $$ as possible while enjoying a three or four day vacation in the mountains. As you know(or should) I live in Kansas, and we basically drove all of the way across Kansas to get to Colorado. Now eastern Kansas is not as flat as a piece of paper, but Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado are. So anyway we started our trip in the dark to spare our eyes the boredom of the flatness, and over the course of the night and early morning we took turns driving and sleeping. We ran some into rain going out, but rain is okay. Except when it downpours like Niagra Falls all over the road. We survived, but only because there was enough lightning to light the way since the rain was falling faster than the windshield wipers would clear it off...
So we made it to Denver around 4AM. This is of course entering the Mountain Time Zone as well. We slept for a little while(maybe 45 minutes) then made our way through downtown Denver to the new football stadium. Pretty nifty. Then we ate breakfast at McDonalds. I ate one and a half of their breakfast burritos. I also had a hash brown. Yum, McDonalds, that piece of crap they call a resturaunt. Their burritos aren't too bad though.
So here we are around 8:30, in Idaho Springs. We went to a Safeway store to get "Mountain Breeze" and other food to eat the rest of the trip. We then went to their visitor center and museum, and toured it for about 30 minutes. Next we headed to Breckenridge. In Breckenridge it was raining. This is of course, around 10AM. The time I would normally be waking up. So my dad and I shopped. Ha, and a successful trip we had. Total purchases: $0.00. We finish shopping and the rain stops raining. So we head to Dillon. We find a campsite and also check out their lake. It really is a pretty lake. We camped in a little two man tent that my dad has. It's blue.
Next we ate lunch at Burger King. Burger King of course being better than McDonalds. So then we have time to kill, so we check out the skatepark near there. It is a nice facility and I enjoyed watching people do stuff with skateboards that I will never be able to do.
Having spent like hours watching and talking to people at the skatepark, we go take showers and head to our campsite. By now it is nearing 7PM. We played Crazy 8's card game, then war, and around 8:30 were bored by the mindless flipping of cards. So we fell asleep(We didn't even eat dinner).
Waking at 7AM the next morning, we packed up and headed out. We took a couple of pictures of Dillon Lake. We stopped at the same Burger King we ate lunch at Sunday and had some food. I ate a Whopper. So we headed out on highway 40, or at least ended up on it, after stopping at Home Depot near Dillon to purchase a battery for my dad's camera. We were following a concrete truck for a while. Not that that really had any bearing on the trip, but I just remembered it. So anyway we are driving along, and we see this canyon, with train tracks going along on the other side of the river. It was pretty amazing. So we crawled down the hill to the river and took a picture or two. Next we continued along and found another cool place and stopped and took a picture.
Not far after that we stopped in Granby to get gas and we checked out a little tourist info place. It was about 11:30 by now. They have a Zero Street. So I had my dad take a picture. Cuz I had never seen that before. So onward we go, and head to a place near Rocky Mountain National Park, and found a cool campground. It's called Elk Creek Campgrounds, and it's near Grand Lake Village, close to Rocky Mountain National Park. I reccomend it to anyone who plans on staying anywhere around that area. They have showers and game rooms and playground stuff for kids. Just a cool place.
Alright so by now my dad and I are ready to do some serious all out hiking. I took my 70oz CamelBak water pack. We entered Rocky Mountain National Forest and headed for a trail that we had been told would lead to mountain sheep. I was hoping to get to see some bighorn sheep and pet one. Okay so not pet one, but anyway, it was a two mile hike probably. Very pretty hike, took us up over eleven thousand feet above sea level. The trail went by a crater, where the sheep were. The trail ended up just past the tree line, where we could see Specimen Mountain. We did see the sheep, about 250 yards away from us. It was very windy. On the way down I found a funky looking mushroom so I ate it. Just kidding, I just took a picture of it.
Still in the mood to hike we took to a trail about a half mile from the first trail, on the other side of the road. There was a sign that talked about the Continental Divide. So my dad got a picture of me sitting in front of the sign, yea! Very cool! (Does the word sarcasm mean much here?) I mean it was cool cuz we had hiked up on it.
So here we go on a new trail, and it splits, so we head left towards some mountain, a four mile hike. We get about a quarter mile along and my dad tells me to stop. Looking ahead, I see an elk. I had never seen one before. I was lookin down at the path, cuz I was about to step over a creek, that was like 4 inches wide hehe. Well anyway my dad and I sat watching the elk for about thirty minutes. It was a ten point buck, a pretty large one. We didn't want to disturb him to the point of charging us. Anyway after that we decided to head back the other way and it was boring, no animals. We got about a mile or so into it and decided to go up on a hill to see what we could see, and we found the hill that we had hiked on the first time. So I took a picture.
Heading back to our car due to boredom, we headed back to our tent. We went into Grand Lake Village and did a little shopping. We didn't find a lot but the town was sorta cool. So we got sick of shopping. I did buy a little keychain that had name on it and found my friends name, spelled how she spells it, "Aimee". Having never seen it spelled like that before, and figuring that I wouldn't ever see it again, I bought it for her. I was gonna get one for my sister, but they didn't have one with Anne with an 'e' on the end. I mean who were the ad wizards that came up with that? LOL
Alright, so then my dad and I go back to our camp. We take showers and then eat peanut butter on Ritz crackers with some honey. We used his pocket knife(after using sanitizer on it) to put the peanut butter on. We saved space by not taking a knife for that(okay so we forgot to take one but hey, who cares?). Well anyway, that dinner reminded me of many nights in college as I would sit in front of my computer eating Ritz crackers and peanut butter and sometimes honey. Sometimes I ate Lucky Charms too. Anyways...We played some Rummy and crazy 8's in the tent for a little while then went to bed. It was definately a successful day, that ended around 9PM.
My dad and I packed up the next morning around 8AM, after being awakened by a crow. My dad threw some pine cones at it and almost hit it. After we finished putting away the tent the crow flew down like 5 feet from my dad and he was like "Why are you waking us up?" and all talkin to it and I was like "Yeah you aren't a chicken you moron!" Yes I talk to animals. Thank you, I already know I'm insane. So anyway the crow flew away to another crow and was probably like "They didn't leave any food, they's blow this joint." or something like that.
So we headed back up the same road as Monday, it turns into Trail Ridge Road that hits over 12,000 feet above sea level. Rock on, so we stopped at this one place, that just had a scenic look, and there were these little chipmunks and ground squirrels. They were so cute, I wanted to pet one. One came up and was wavin its front paws as it stood on its back feet, wanting food. It was soo cute, so we pulled out the peanuts and fed it some. It's cheeks got so full I thought it was going to fall over as it begged for more. My dad took a picture of it.
So we continued up the road, stopping at 12,090 feet(There was a sign that told the altitude). We were out of the car for about 30 seconds. It was windy and cold. So we continued, going down now. We stopped to go to a trail to see some water falls. It wasn't a trail. It was paved. But we got pictures of the falls, and so it was ok.
Onward bound we go, headed for Estes Park. We did more shopping, and bought my sister some Jelly Belly jelly beans. I bought a T-shirt that is a "Get off the couch" series. On the back it says
Next we continued to go hike up a different trail to an abandoned gold mine. Very disapointing trail. There were a few interesting colored rocks along the way. Oh well.
Finally we continued to Longmont to meet my chat friend(and favorite long distance neighbor), Dee. We took highway 7 through this cool looking canyon. It was pretty nifty. My dad and I arrived at like, 3PM. I changed into my Metallica T-shirt and urban cammo pants, which I had told Dee I would be wearing. My dad and I went into the mall and cruised around for a while. So I was supposed to meet Dee at 5, but she thought we were meeting outside the mall, I thought we were meeting inside, so it was like 5:36PM when we finally hooked up. But it was cool. Her boyfriend Jason showed up and so did Jasons best friend Andrew, and Andrew's wife Ariel. It was fun talking to them. We headed into a little resturaunt place to eat dinner. Jason wouldn't let Dee order grilled cheese cuz "Dee needs to eat real food". So I ordered grilled cheese, hehe. Dee ordered cheese sticks, Andrew ordered a steak burger I think, and his wife ordered cheese sticks. Jason ordered some chilli burger thing or something I forget, and my dad had a salad. Everyone but my dad had Mountain Dew, we went through like 3 pitchers of it. Andrew and Jason wouldn't let my dad pay for any of it and so when my dad gave Andrew $20 Andrew handed it to me. Hehe.
Well now it is about 7:40PM, and my dad and I head out, back for home. We left the Denver area about 8:10PM Mountain Time Zone. As we came back home we again took turns driving. A little way into Kansas we could see lightning ahead of us. For the most part it just stayed ahead(east) of us. At one point I drove for almost two hours, stopping only because the "check engine" light came on. Well I pulled into a rest stop, and we rested for a while. My dad drove the rest of the way home as I slept. The check engine light didnt come back on, which was good. He drove thorugh the early morning, and we arrived back home at 7:30AM Central Standard Time.
Gas to CO:$ 23
Hiking T-shirt: $18
Total Cost(minus souvineers): $163
Meeting Dee: Priceless
| This was taken on Sunday by Lake Dillon. |
 | This is a chipmunk that I saw when we stopped off of the road at a lookout point. |
 | This was at the corner of Jasper Ave. and Zero St. in Granby. |
 | This is the ten point elk that my dad and I watched for about thirty minutes. |
 | This was on Monday after we hiked two trails. |
| My dad took this picture of me and my favorite long distance neighbor and the rest of the gang. Left to right: Me, Jason and Dee(my favorite long distance neighbor), Ariel and Andrew. |
Last Updated: 7/23/01