August 24-Day 2 - 2010 Vacation

Today we traveled from Cheyenne WY to Jackson WY. We left Cheyenne around 10:00.  The first 4 hrs was pretty uneventful.  We did have a tractor trailer blow a tire when he was right next to us.  It was pretty scary for a second.  The scenery was worse than western KS.  It was mostly prairie and some hills.  You could go 30 miles before you’d see a house.  There would be mailboxes and driveways, but I’d never see a house.  I saw lots of antelope.  We had lunch in Lander.

The last half of the trip was a little more scenic.  Lots of cool rock formations.  You could see all the different layers of soil in the rock formations (I wouldn’t call them mountains).  They just looked like the ground got pushed up.  We had a little fox run across the road at one point.  It was small, about the size of a cat.  Then we started seeing signs that said the road was closed between 10pm-1am and 1:30am-4:30am.  We thought that was really interesting.  Then we got to the point of the road that they were closing.  It was a mess.  We had to follow a pilot car thru about 15 miles of tore up rock road.  It was rough.

We finally made it to Jackson around 7:30 pm.  We have a really cute cabin in town.  It is a pretty quiet property.  It is walking distance from downtown.  We unpacked, then headed for the fitness center that is in the basement of the office building.  After our workout, we headed into town.  We ended up at Mountain High Pizza.  It was pretty good.  We decided to call it a night and head back to the cabin to get settled in.

Tomorrow we are just gonna stick around town.  We are hoping to do some sightseeing around town and possibly some rock climbing.  We also have our chuck wagon  dinner planned tomorrow night.

August 23-Day 1 - 2010 Vacation

We left this morning around 8:30am.  Went to the Bread Basket in Newton for breakfast. It was super yummy.   Then we stopped in Limon to have lunch at the same Mexican place we ate at on our last day of vacation last year, Jenny’s.  It was still as good as it was a year ago.

We decided we’d continue on to Cheyenne WY.  It only took us two tries to fine a hotel.  We are at the Candlewood Suites.  It is very nice with a full kitchen and my favorite, free WiFi.  We started to head into town to find somewhere to eat and we ended up at Sanfords Grub & Pub.   It was a huge place full of a hodge-podge of collectables and memorabilia.  It also had the hugest menu I’ve ever seen. Along with the large menu was the large plates of lots of very good food.  Good thing we worked out in the hotel fitness center before dinner. 

We’re gonna head out in the morning for Jackson.  It should only be a 6-7 hr trip from here.

One week Away

Justin and I will be leaving for our vacation to Jackson, WY/Grand Teton/Yellowstone in one week. I think both of us really need some time away. We are looking forward to all the fun outdoorsy stuff we are planning. This trip we are doing a mountain bike ride, chuck wagon dinner, scenic raft trip/whitewater trip, duckie ride (2-person raft), and plan on lots of sight seeing and hiking. I will update my blog each night as I did last year. This year, we are staying in Jackson Hole and should have easy access to wireless. There should be lots of photos and hopefully some good stories.

Stay tuned!!

August 24-Day 7 of Vacation

We got up and packed up around 8am this morning. We went into town and ate at our favorite breakfast joint, the Egg & I. Then we finished up our souvenir shopping. I got some pictures of some flowers for my mom. It was the end of the season, so all the stores were having sales. Then we headed out of town. We stopped at the overlook to Estes Park.

Then we headed home. We stopped in Limon for lunch. We found this awesome Mexican joint called Jenny’s. This was the best Mexican food we have had our whole vacation. The place was small, but the food was authentic or at least awesome. If you are ever in Limon, check out Jenny’s. It is on the main street.

Then we went down the road to the truck stop. That is where Justin noticed the front right tire was flat. Somewhere between Denver and Limon we must have hit something, because we had a small hole in the sidewall. We found a NAPA and they went to repair it. They said it was in the sidewall and since his tire is speed rated so they couldn’t patch it. They called their sister store in Flagler and was still not able to find a tire. We were debating our options when they were able to locate a used tire that was the same size. Sounds like we won’t be staying at the Bates motel here in Limon. They are mounting the tire as I type and hopefully we will get on our way soon. They don’t have a waiting room here so I am doing my blogging sitting on top of a huge Arctic Cat and it is raining like crazy outside. It wouldn’t be a vacation without adversity.

August 23-Day 6 of Vacation

Today we a pretty busy day.  We got up.  Justin ran. Then he came back and made breakfast.  Then we headed into town.  We checked out the Estes Park visitor’s center and picked up a few brochures on some stuff to do today.  We headed to the Stanley museum, but it was closed. So, we decided just to walk thru town.  We went to the heritage festival for a little bit.  We got some fresh squeezed lemonade and watched a reenactment of a cowboy shootout.  Then we wondered thru town.  I picked up some t-shirts. 

 

We walked all the way to the west end of town and back.  We ended up eating at Ed’s Cantina.  It was much better than the Grumpy Gringo.  Estes Park redeemed itself in Mexican food. Then we went to the Stanley museum.  Earlier, we had made an appointment for a couples massage.  That was pretty relaxing after the week we have had.  We are both very sore from all the hiking yesterday.

After our massage, we went to the Estes Park museum.  It was small, but it had a lot of cool history stuff from the city.  While we were looking for the museum we finally found Samson.  Samson was a local elk that was killed by a poacher in 1995.  I had been looking for him all week.  I had read the story in one of the books I purchased. The locals donated a bunch of money and put up this statue to remember Samson.

Then, we headed to the aerial tramway, finally. I have a little issue with heights, so once we got on this little cart that took us to the top, it was a little scary.  However, it has some very awesome views.  Go figure, the day we finally get to go up there, it is stormy and hazy. Once we got to the top, we were immediately greeted by a chipmunk. He was expecting us to have some peanuts.  They sold them at the store up there, so we got a scoop. There were these little chipmunks everywhere.  With all the people feeding them peanuts, I can’t believe these things don’t weigh 500 lbs.  Some of them would come right up to you and take the peanuts from your fingers.  We were told by our wrangler on the horseback ride a few days back, that these little creatures carry the plague. So, as these little guys were taking the peanuts out of my fingers, I was a little nervous.  One of them grabbed my finger with his cute little claws while taking a peanut.

After the tram, we headed to dinner.  We ate at Peak to Peak.  It was pretty decent.  Again, I ate myself miserable.  Tonight, we are just gonna veg out.  Tomorrow morning we have to leave and head back home.  We still have some souvenirs to purchase, so we will hit the town again in the morning.  We haven’t began packing or anything yet. That’s about it for our vacation.  Now we have to go back to the real world and go back to our regular lives.

Remember to check out “My Pictures” for all the photos from our vacation.

August 22-Day 5 of Vacation

Today, Justin decided to get up and run 2 miles.  I decided not to go because I knew we would be getting enough exercise on the mountain hiking today.  Then we decided to go back to one of our favorite places for breakfast, The Egg and I. It was super yummy, again.  They have the best ranch potatoes.  It was so good that we got some of them to go.  That is what we will make breakfast with tomorrow.

After  breakfast, we headed into Rocky Mountain National Forest.  We decided to see Alberta falls, so we had to go to the Glacier Gorge trail head.  However, the parking lot was full.  Then we went to the Bear Lake trailhead. The ranger at the entrance told us this parking lot was also full.  We had to go thru it to turn around.  As we were driving out, a car left.  Bear lake trailhead isn’t exactly where I wanted to start, but it all goes to the same place.

So we headed out toward Alberta Falls.  The trail was not as challenging as we would have liked.  It was very well marked and flat. Once we began hearing running water, we got off the trail and headed toward it.  We found a nice little creek (Glacier Creek). We followed it along a sloped and rocky trail until we came to Alberta Falls.  Alberta falls is a 25ft cascade in Glacier Creek. We hung out there for a while and took some pictures. Then we headed out to find the original trail and see where it takes us.  We were trying to make a big loop back to Bear Lake trailhead so we didn’t have to double back on any trails.  We found tons of great scenery.  It seemed like no matter where we went, we were going up. This trail became more technical.  There were more rocks and the trail was narrower.  If you fell over you’d probably fall to your death.  Once we got to “The Loch”, we did a map check.  Well, somewhere we had chosen the wrong path. We had to backtrack from the Loch and head toward Bear Lake via an unimproved trail.  However, I believe if we hadn’t gotten lost we would not have seen some really great views. Like in this picture.  Behind us in the Chaos Canyon Cascades Once we got on the right trail it was more uphill, rock climbing, and root steps.  There were tons of varmints on these trails.  We saw lots of squirrels, chipmunks, a woodpecker, and another marmot. We finally made out way back to the Bear lake trailhead.  I was ready to get my shoes off.  We had hiked 7.5 miles in almost 5 hours and reached a max elevation of approximately 10,200 ft. I had originally estimated a 4 mile hike. We were both extremely dirty, so we headed back to the cabin to clean up for dinner.

Tonight we went downtown to Poppy’s.  It is a pizza joint in an outdoor square.  There was a lady playing her guitar and singing in the mini amphitheater.  The pizza at Poppy’s was good.  However, we have left overs.  Now we have BBQ left overs and Pizza left overs and we leave Monday morning. Then Justin and I took a walk on the river walk.  It was a gorgeous night. We decided to go to the bakery that I have been wanting to go to.  I got cinnamon apple pie and Justin got Key Lime. Mine was good.  It would have been better if it were warm.  The apples were sliced really thin, just how I like them. Then we went to Starbucks and got something to drink so we would sit out on their patio tables.

That completed day 5.  Not sure what we are doing tomorrow.  I know we want to go into town and check out this Heritage festival.  We need to pick up our souvenirs that we’ve been scouting out all week. There are some museums I want to check out.  We still want to go on the aerial tramway.

I have been uploading all our vacation photos to my Picasa account.  That means if you want to see the entire trip, click on My Photos on the right hand side of the page.

August 21-Day 4 of Vacation

We got up early today because we had to dead to Fort Collins which is about 1 hr away.  This is where we did our water rafting out of. There were approximately 24 of us. We go suited up in our life jackets and helmets.  I didn’t know what to expect on the trip so I didn’t take my camera.  I wish now that I would have bought a waterproof camera.

After getting loaded up into a big yellow school bus, we headed to the put in spot.  The river we are rafting on today is called the Cache la Poudre River.  It was down substantially from the more exciting June and July months. Our guides name was Dave.  I would guess that he is close to my age. He said he calls North Carolina home only because he went to school there.  Other wise he has lived in at least 18 places for more than 6 mos.  How exciting would that life be?

We had 4 other people in our raft.  We kept getting stuck on rocks because the water level was so low.  There were some pretty exciting times.  For a first timer, it was probably perfect. Next time I’ll go in June or July.

The water was freezing cold.  Dave said this is the warmest it gets.  We stopped at the swimming hole to play in the water.  There was just one other couple playing in the water and they were from Wyoming.  Then Justin decided it would be funny to throw me over his shoulder and toss me in. It wasn’t cold, it was freaking cold.  But, we pressed on and got back into our boats and headed to the pull out point.  It was a very scenic ride.

We got out of the river, loaded back into the yellow school bus, and headed back to town.  Our guides were very funny.  They said they have one more week of the season.  Once we got back to the business and got changed, we went inside to check to the pictures they took of us.  I found 4 that I liked.  They will be e-mailing them to me today or tomorrow. Then we took of our guides advice and headed into town to eat at Cooper Smith’s.

After lunch, we headed home. I slept in the car on the way home.  When we got home, I sat on the deck and read while Justin slept on the couch.  After our time of relaxation, we got up and around for dinner.  We decided to go to Smokin’ Dave's BBQ.  It was very good.  I don’t know how it rates to Hog Wild, but it is right up there.  They also had the best mashed potatoes.  We even got a side order of them to-go.  Then, we decided to come home and veg out.  We watched some preseason football.  The Cowboys were playing Tennessee.

We haven’t quite decided what we are going to do today.  Estes Park is having their Heritage Festival today and tomorrow.  We will probably check that out.  We want to do some more hiking.  We’d like to check out the aerial tramway. We only have 2 days left before we head home.