Mesa Verde, Boulder, and Silverthorne, CO

We were a little sad about having to leave Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, but the idea of staying in warm hotel room with hot running water sounded really good after two very cold nights in the desert. Some of the other campers that I spoke with had been on the road for a week! I'll bet their laundry smelled REALLY bad!

We found a flea bag hotel in Salida, Colorado that was pretty bad, but we were grateful to have found a place that took pets. This area of the country is teeming with people seeking to reconnect with the land and its long-gone inhabitants. Honestly, I thought for sure, we'd be the only ones out doing this kind of thing at this time of year. Turns out "That is crazy!", "Great minds think alike", and "Water seeks it's own level" comes into play here...

Before heading to Boulder to see one of my dearest friends, Joe Smyth, who works at Colorado University - Boulder in the Geology Dept. we drove up into Mesa Verde, Colorado, specifically to see the cliff dwellings there. We stopped and checked out the Visitor's Center. The weather was absolutely beautiful as it has been on most of our trip, and the long 18 mile drive into the park was very exciting. Lots of vistas and high elevation lookouts to photograph. Seeing as we were there off-season we were not able to get up close and personal to the actual cliff dwellings (only get up close with a guided tour) but we're able to see them from about a quarter mile away. I took some photographs and I'm hoping on a big screen during a slideshow we will get to view them up close and personal.

Other points of interest during the day were lots of short hikes around the park and other cliff dwelling neighborhoods. Gertie came with us and was very well behaved on her short leash, as to not get cactus thorns in her foot. That happened on other previous hikes. At this point, she would look at one and quickly shy away from it. Ouch!

On the way to Boulder, we stopped in Golden, CO to have brunch at Abeja's Bistro - the smoked pastrami sandwich was TO DIE FOR. There, we met up with a sweet teammate from Vail Resorts, and friend extraordinaire, Ambereen. Her husband, Mark, another great friend I met at Breckenridge was off to the Broncos game in Denver, so we'll have to catch up with him on another trip...

We then proceeded to Boulder, found another nice hotel room and got settled in. Later that afternoon we met up with Joe, Doug Graver and his new boyfriend, Mike, and mutual friend of all of ours, Doug Brown, of Reindeer Ranch fame and fortune. We all visited together at Joe's condo on Pearl Street in Boulder, then walked up the Pearl Street Mall to see if we could get seated at the Dushanbe Tea House. This place has an incredible story, as well as being very visually stimulating, please read about it by clicking this link.

The Dushanbe Tea House did not have a table for us, so we went back to Pearl Street Mall and got a table for 7 at SForno Trattoria. The food was excellent, the company second to none, and it was so great to reconnect with so many friends.

Everyone loved Bernie, and he had some wonderful personal connections with each of my friends. As we were leaving all agreed we should not let 5 years ago by again without seeing each other.

After a lovely and restful stay at the Holiday Inn Express in North Boulder, we set out for Joe's cabin in Silverthorne, Colorado, in Summit County. Joe has a lovely log cabin up there, but don't let this fool you it is total luxury for a log cabin!

It was snowing and continue to snow overnight, so Doug Brown came up and spent the night and he and I went to snowboarding and skiing in the morning. Bernie hung out in the lodge and worked on his computer, while Doug and I got several runs in on fresh snow which was so amazing I was dancing 10 ft off the ground with happiness. We called it a short day as the elevation can make us dizzy and short of breath and we headed back to the cabin made a fire, and watched some slide shows of photos we've been taking from our trip so far.

Later that evening excellent friends, who I had not seen for a long time, Phil and Janelle, and Charlie Wrather came over for spaghetti and meatball dinner. We showed them some of our recent trip photos and all had a very warm and engaging time together. So lovely to see my dear friends again.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for the next upcoming blog in Moab, Utah.

Click here to view the photo album