On the Way to Colorado

Sara and I left Brookings on Tuesday afternoon and drove to Rapid City. We arrived there in time for supper with my brother Jody, his girlfriend Brandi and my cousin's wife and kids. Jody made some spectacular steak burritos with all the extras. He even browned the tortillas the old fashioned way! It was my own personal Qdoba :) We spent the night there and then took off in the morning.

We drove through Needles Highway on our way out of South Dakota. The twisty, turny roads, beautiful views, tunnels through the road and looking out over the sheer drops on the edge were fun for a while but after the first half hour we were wishing we could just have a straight flat road again.

We finally got out of South Dakota and into Wyoming. In Wyoming, we didn't see a thing. Literally. We saw nothing. There were no towns, no people, no houses, no mountains, no animals. Not even any color.

That state was NOT our favorite, although it was much worse when we came home, for a very different reason, but I'll get to that later. Somewhere in the middle of that desolate state, my check engine light came on. I wasn't overly concerned right away because the car seemed to be driving fine but I didn't want to continue too far without checking it out.  Then the ABS light came on, which I knew had to do with the brakes. I definitely didn't want to drive up into the mountains if there were brake issues. Of course, there wasn't even anywhere to check on it for hundreds of miles. We continued on and called ahead to the closest VW dealership. Long story shorter, lots of internet searching and phone calls with techs later, we finallly just ended up continuing into Denver. We pulled into the service garage a half hour before they were closing. After discussion and a look at the car, the concensus there was also that none of the issues would be worsened by driving. They set us up with an appointment in the morning to work on the car.

One of the two things on my list for the area was to eat at Casa Bonita in Denver so that's where we went next. It's Mexican food with a lot of ambiance. This is the view from our table.

I didn't get a very good picture of the cliff divers with my phone so just imagine a diver climbing up the rocks and then diving from various spots into the water below. It really wasn't a great as I remembered, maybe because I was tired. The waterfall was noisy and the food wasn't as good as Guadalajara's at home, but it was fun to watch the cliff diving and the sopaipillas with honey were awesome!

Here are some interesting facts about the restaurant:

• It took approximately one year to create Casa Bonita.
• The fountain in front of the restaurant was shipped in pieces from Mexico.
• The restaurant boasts over 52,000 square feet and seats over 1,000 guests.
• The waterfall, designed to resemble the cliffs of Acapulco, is 30 feet high and the pool is 14 feet deep.
• The restaurant has Black Bart's secret hideout, puppet shows, arcade games, El Mercado, and giftshop.

We left the restaurant and proceeded to find a hotel to spend the night. Which turned out to be more of a problem than I thought. Everything was booked! So Sara got a nice picture of downtown Denver while we tried to find a hotel.

I think everything was full because of the major bike race that was going on across Colorado. We were always just one day ahead of the racers. I should have just called my aunt that lives in Denver but I thought it would be easier just to grab a hotel. We ended up sitting in a parking garage and searching online to find somewhere to stay. We finally found a decent hotel on the outskirts of Denver that had one room left so we booked it and spent the night there.

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