Here's the view from our hotel room. You can barely make out the mountains in the background. We started out the day on Thursday by heading to the Volkswagon dealership to have them hook up the car to their diagnostic computer. They originally said it would take about two hours to run the complete computer scan. Even though VW has a great waiting room with snacks, drinks, coffee and TV, we didn't really want to spend a long amount of time there so we had their shuttle take us to the Cherry Creek Mall. It was ok for a while but most of the stores were higher-end shopping and we aren't really into shopping anyway so we didn't buy much. Actually, I didn't buy anything but Sara found a fleece jacket that she liked, so she got it. I should have taken her picture in it so I could post it! Mostly we waited to hear back about what was wrong with the car and how much it would cost to fix it.
While we were at the mall, I received my first official meltdown phone call of the trip. Brittney had gotten a haircut and I guess it didn't turn out exactly how she wanted it. Combine that with being extremely tired and you get a phone call in which nothing is right and her life is over. I was on the phone with her for 15 minutes and then she just kept calling me back over and over. I really just wanted to tell her to go to bed and try again in the morning but I figured that would just make it worse. And what do you know, by the next day, her 14 year old world was fine again!
One of the best parts of the mall was discovering an awesome restaurant. Sara found it while I was on the phone with Brittney. It's called California Pizza Kitchen and the food was awesome! Even though the name says pizza, they had a great variety different dishes.We want to go back with a big group of people so everyone can order something different and we can try lots of different things. I was so busy enjoying the food that I didn't take any pictures there!
While we were there, I received word from the mechanic that the issues with the car weren't going to make a mess of our trip. There was a tire rotation sensor that just needed to be taken out and cleaned, which they did. There was also a broken hose that was supposed to shoot air into the engine. Something about the air 'tricking' the engine into thinking it was already at highway speed. According to the mechanic, the hose wasn't a big deal to the performance of the engine and wouldn't make any difference to the drivability of the car. It was something we could fix once we got back home again. Good thing because that would have cost us another $900, as opposed to the $200 I spent.
Once we got the mechanical ok to take the car up into the mountains, we headed for Boulder. We contemplated hiking up Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder but decided to drive instead. I'm glad we did. It would have been an all-day hike!
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I though it was pretty funny that they had a Half-Way House on the mountain!
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About the time we reached the half-way mark, I was thinking about turning around. The road was really steep, narrow and winding. We were a little nervous about our little car making it.........
until we saw a UPS truck and a school bus coming up the road behind us.
We decided we could probably make it!
We also saw quite a few of these signs. We laughed the first time we saw one but after seeing them numereous times and hearing the concern of the locals, we didn't laugh quite so hard.
Sara'a favorite is the second bullet point. We still laugh a lot at that one!
At the top of Flagstaff Mountain, we stopped at the ampitheater. The view was beautiful.
I don't mind heights and the view was great but it was a little nerve-wracking when a dad was dangling a little baby over the edge to make her smile. The mom was calmly taking pictures.
From Boulder we headed to Estes Park.
I could never seem to remember the name and had to ask Sara a million times what the name of the town was. It was on the way there that we saw our first Colorado elk.
Since we're used to our little South Dakota deer, they were a lot bigger than we were expecting. They were just standing by the side of the road and the two cars in front of us stopped for a while to watch them. Sara rolled down her window to take this picture and then turned towards me to look at her phone to see if the picture turned out ok. I was still slowly driving and the elk were right beside us when I calmly asked Sara if she thought it would be a good idea to roll up her window. All I could imagine was one of the elk sticking his head inside the car and getting his huge antlers stuck. They just kept calmly eating the flowers by the road. One had a bunch in his mouth like he was presenting us with a bouquet. The other one was tossed a branch on our windshield. That was about the time we decided to move on. The elk picked that time to move too. They ran beside our car for a while before we finally left them behind.
Estes Park is a quaint little tourist town with a creek running through it.
Not a very good picture but you get the idea.
We walked around searching for the taffy store.
Turns out they have like five different taffy stores but all but one of them close at 5pm. Wouldn't you know it, we were there at just past 5pm. Darn elk slowing us down. We did eventually find and purchase some homemade saltwater taffy and then ate at a local place. Sara had heard about an old 'haunted' hotel in the Estes Park area so we went to find it. I'm always up for a little mystery.
Once we found it and took a couple of pictures, we went inside. The Stanley Hotel is a 140 room hotel that opened in 1909 and caters to the rich and famous. It's still set up just like it was in the 1900's, with real metal keys for rooms and an old metal elevator. It's also famous for hosting novelist Stephan King and inspiring him to write his novel The Shining. Parts of the mini-series version of The Shining were also filmed there.
It's said that the hotel is haunted and we really wanted to go on one of the haunted tours but the tour would have lasted over two hours and it was already getting late and dark so we just walked around inside instead. I told Sara that I'd be willing to spend the night in one of the haunted rooms but I don't think she was a fan of that idea! Plus, we had a nice, free condo waiting for us only two hours away. So we programed the GPS for the condo and started our drive on mountain roads in the dark. Thankfully, we didn't hit any animals or drive off any sharp curves on the way.
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Stay tuned to find out what we did on Friday!
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