Rocky Mountain State!

sat | sun | mon | tues | wed | thurs | fri | sat2 | sun2

day 1: saturday, august 18 — 105 miles
As soon as we arrived, we were heading straight to golden. We were now about two hours behind schedule, and that meant improvising. But first things first: we had to get some lunch. We stopped in at the capitol grille on the main drag in quaint golden, which used to be the territorial capital of colorado. There was no time to visit the nearby buffalo bill museum & gravesite. In fact, we even missed the last tour of the day at the coors brewery. We decided to fit this in somehow next saturday on our return to colorado.

After lunch and a quick walk around the town, we headed north through boulder (a cool looking college town) and farther into the foothills and on to estes park. There was a light drizzle as we attended mass at our lady of the mountains, a church with a cool rustic look. We still had a 45 minute drive to our stop for the night in loveland.

day 2: sunday, august 19 — 410 miles
We headed back toward estes park and then entered rocky mountain national park. This park was truly amazing. We climbed higher and higher up the gently winding trail ridge road. Although we were 10 or 11,000 feet above sea level, the peaks of nearby mountains were much higher all around us (see my rocky mountain park pics). We even went above the "tree line", where only scrub brush grows. This region is considered tundra. We saw a couple of elk, but what I really wanted to see, bighorn sheep, were definitely hidden from view. We had lunch at the alpine visitor center, which is sort of the midway point on the road, and continued as far as the continental divide. Then we turned around and headed back to estes park.

At estes park, we stopped in for a wine tasting at snowy peaks winery. I really liked the riesling! Then we began our long drive east and then north, through fort collins, and into wyoming . . .

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We said goodbye to wyoming and headed due south through denver and down to colorado springs for a quick self-guided tour of the us air force academy. The central building on campus is the chapel, which looks something like fighter jets pointed to the sky (see my around colorado pics).

Then we scooted back to golden to finally take in the coors brewery tour. This was a fun tour of the largest brewery in the world (see my coors pics), and it included 3 free samples in the tasting room at the end. And the samples are 10 oz. glasses! I am now a big fan of coors (the banquet beer) and blue moon (made by coors too).

Finally, it was time to explore denver, if only briefly, since this wasn't really a "colorado" trip proper. First stop: a colorado rockies baseball game. I really liked coors field, and I had a ticket for the fancy mezzanine level. Nice! The rockies got going in the bottom of the first with a homer by troy tulowitzki (see my rockies pics). The crowd was rather thin for this game against the nationals, but soon after my visit, the team began the great rockies' run of 2007! Coincidence? You decide!

The ballpark is surrounded by a number of restaurants, bars, and clubs. After the game I sampled some brews at the wynkoop brewing company. What a cool place, with an upstairs pool room too. But we were running out of energy on our last night.

day 9: sunday, august 26 — 50 miles
We started sunday with mass at the cathedral basilica of the immaculate conception in downtown denver. Just a few blocks away is the state capitol, which includes a marker on a step that marks one mile above sea level (see my around colorado pics). The mile high city really likes to let you know it! There was so much more to see, but that will have to wait until we come back to more fully explore colorado.