OK, so I was at Fort Collins/Loveland Airport at 3am for my door to door shuttle pickup.  They won't come to my house anymore as I live about 1/2 mile out of their door to door service area.  I always park at the airport - that way if I can hop to LAS and skip back into Loveland on Allegiant Air my pickup is already there.  Anyway - was not hard to awaken at the early hour as I didn't go to bed.  I knew the long trip ahead of me, and I had some packing to do and mucking out of the house beforehand, so I just stayed up.  The cab was right on time and I was at the pickup stop in Centerra before long.  No troubles getting on the bus.  It started raining pretty hard, so I dozed half out of survival so I didn't have to watch the road, and half as I was pretty-much wasted from no sleep.  Figured that would make the trip go faster.  DIA was busy, as usual, so I checked in for my flight and went to eat breakfast.  I am always majorly early, so I had time to read the paper and try to stay awake.  I made the flight, which was very full.  There were quite a few standby passengers, but I allowed lots of time and some additional back up plans so I wasn't really worried.  I wanted to try to go through Charlotte and see if it was easier to fly through, but Philly has two daily Frankfurt flights and Charlotte only has one.  All the flights were fairly full, so I wanted to give myself the best chance at getting out today.  I chose Philly.  So, I got seat 25B - which is not the best seat, but I fell asleep the minute I sat down.  Don't even remember the safety demo.   

    After a kickass weekend in Chicago, I streaked across Iowa and Nebraska to catch up with an old friend in Loveland, TX.  Not much going on the road (except for ridiculous traffic outside Lincoln, Nebraska).  As I entered Colorado, I knew I had entered a different standard of life.  The big sky was dark and cloudy, and it began to rain and sleet.  Then a lightning bolt streaked down to an unknown site lighting the sky and the surrounding environment.  It was so amazing, and it lifted my tired eyes to become aware of where I was and where I was going.
The wolfman welcomed me into his apartment he shared with his gf.  We talked a bit before heading to sleep (it was pretty late, like 14+ hours of driving for me, too). 

Loveland is not so much different than my home town.  It is a franchise/superstore lover's paradise.  Luckily, the rockies were just out of town.  So yeah, you've got to deal with the monotony of another wal-mart, starbucks, mcdonalds littered town, but you've got an amazing playground minutes away.

The wolfman took me up to the first ridge to walk around with his puppy (australian sheepdog, border-collie mix), who nearly plummeted to her death.  Luckily, I was able to grab hold of her leash as she was about to fall 90 feet and yanked her back up.  Close call.

We caught up with wolf's gf for some Za.  There's an excellent pizzaria in Fort Collins called Beau Jo's.  Actually, there are a few of them in colorado.  CHECK OUT THE CHALLENGE!!!

We went back to the apartment to chill, drink a few brews and watch some film.  The next day, ready for more of the Rockies, I took off for Steamboat Springs where I crashed with  one of my sister's friends for the night.

mmmmmm...

I went to Estes Park, and that ended up being a great experience. It was really fun, especially if you happen to like wildlife as much as my brother and dad do. We saw a lot of magpies, ground hogs, elk, hawks, but by far the most exciting thing we saw was a yellow-bellied marmot. We were going on a hike to these falls and I was walking along the edge of the trail when I suddenly looked down and saw the marmot just a few feet in front of me. It was frozen, as was I. It looked at me for a while and luckily I was able to snap a pretty good picture of it before it scurried away back into its hole. We saw a lot of elk EVERYWHERE! When I first saw them, I was really excited because I thought that it was really special that they were there and that we were lucky to see them.

A pretty river that I think was called the Thompson River

               Once again, if you are really into nature or hiking you would really like Colorado, or at least the place where I was. We took many hikes and there was quite a few wildflowers. To see a lot of wildflowers you had to go to places where there was lower elevation because in the higher elevations there was still a lot of snow. I didn't really know what any of the flowers were called, but I took a few pictures anyway. I know for sure that we did see a cactus though.          

My brother, dad and I were very excited about going to Colorado. However, upon arrival in the Denver airport it proved that our luck wasn't agreeing with us. Firstly, we were trying to look for where we were supposed to go to rent our car. We got off ther plan in terminal B12 lugged our bags all the way to terminal B30 and then be told we had to turn around and go back a few terminals. Then after we finally got to what they called the center court for the terminals we finally saw a sign that told us where to go for ground transportation. Before we could get to a car though we had to take an underground subway to get there. The subway made many odd noises when people get on or off. We get off at our stop and head to our rental car booth but no one is there. An old man tells us to precede out of these sliding doors and find our bus that will take us to our car. However, when we get to the bus the driver tells us that although me made a reservation, there were no cars left. In the end we finally got a car and were all in ok spirits at least thinking that our troubles were mostly over with. How wrong we were, a minute or so after we leave the rental car place we are already lost and trying to find our way out of the mess we are in when a cop pulls over my dad telling him that he was speeding. Luckily we got off with a warning. We got lost three more times after getting lost in the airport and it ended up that what was supposed to be an hour drive took us two hours. Although getting lost wasn't that fun, perhaps I should be glad because it is funny to reflect on now and maybe it even made the trip even more memorable than if we were to not get lost.

incredible except for the layover there and back and i think the pilot may have been drinking a little on the way back b/c before taking off he was swerving....anyway, colorado is so much fun except for having to drive forever to get anywhere. it took us 2 hours to get to estes park (home of the hotel from the ever so famous movie The Shining) and we decided to take the top off the jeep b/c we thought it was warm..hahaha yeah right. still a fun ride and the view was incredible the entire way. also took us two hours to get to the mountain where we 4 wheeled. there was still snow!!! in april!!! and finally the snowboarding trip: in the arapahoe basin 11,000 ft above sea level surrounded by mountains covered in feet of snow. the best time of my life!! you could even see where the backcountry skiers and snowboarders walked up the mountain to ski or snowboard down!!!