Mile high

We know, we know…  We take far too long in between blog posts.  We’ll try to do better about that moving forward.  I think I’m going to make a plan for myself to post something once a week, even if nothing particularly interesting is going on.  Hopefully I can stick to that.

In this case, there really hasn’t been anything too interesting going on.  At least as far as our travels go.  Mainly because we haven’t actually been traveling.

Since the last post the biggest news is probably that we did end up finding the kitten’s owners before we left Utah.  Our friend Michael back in Portland, who works for the Oregon Humane Society, sent us the contact info for an animal shelter near Torrey and within an hour of giving them a picture of the kitten to put on their website the kitten’s owners were found.  We were happy to see him safe and sound back with his family, and also a little sad to see him go.

After leaving Utah we made it over the Rockies and to the campground just east of Denver that we’ve staying at for the last 5 weeks.  During our stay here we’ve mostly been spending time with friends and family and trying to avoid all the crazy late summer Colorado weather.  The day after we got here there was a tornado warning just a few miles north of us and, other than the super hot and muggy temps, we’ve also had regular afternoon thunderstorms and even a few hail storms (luckily we’ve avoided any major hail damage to the solar panels).  We knew this wasn’t going to be the best time of the year to be in Colorado, but it’s been worth it to be able to spend time with everyone in the Denver area.

And we did get the chance a couple weekends ago to drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park and spend a day exploring that area, which was beautiful.

We did a few hikes in the park but a short one near the Alpine Visitor Center took us up to an overlook at 12,005 feet above sea level and I realized that is the highest I have ever been with my feet on the ground (being in an airplane doesn’t count).

We also added a new section to the website archiving our visits to the different national parks with a map of the ones we’ve visited and a few pictures from each.  Lauren and I have a goal to see as many of them as we can during our time on the road, so we thought we should start keeping track.  We’re not counting any of the parks we’ve been to separately but so far we’ve visited 14 of the 63 together.

And on our way back from Rocky Mountain NP we stopped at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park which was the inspiration for The Overlook Hotel in The Shining.

We’ve got one more week out here and then we’ll hit the road for a quick stop up in Wyoming, so I can attend a conference for work, before we come back through Colorado (but on the west side of the Rockies this time) as we make our way down south into Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas for the winter.

We have enjoyed our time out here and it will be sad to say goodbye to everyone in Denver, but we are more than ready to get back on the road and the adventures that await us.