Welcome to our recent trip to Utah and Colorado. Candice's grandparents picked us up at the airport and gave us food and shelter. The salmon dinner was fabulous and even Candice loved it.
We have been lucky to do quite a bit of traveling this year and it was great to see family on this trip. It was a beautiful and relaxing trip and I got my fill of mountains for the year.
No explanation needed.
Location: Canyonlands National Park
Here we are at Balanced Rock in Arches National Park. Beautiful, but very hot and dry.
On this trip we saw these petroglyphs, walked in actual dinosaur tracks and went to a natural history museum. I was in nerd paradise.
This is a glacier on the drive to up to Mt. Evans. Candice nearly lost her lunch as she peered over the edge of the cliffs on the drive up. It wasn't the only time on the trip where her fear of ledges led to some drama.
Here we are standing atop Mount Evans near Denver. You can drive to within a couple hundred feet of the top of the peak (elevation 14,265 feet). The road up is pretty narrow and precarious since there are no rails to keep you from falling thousands of feet.
My brothers and I took an early morning hike to Mills Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a beautiful lake right under the tallest peaks in the park. We came up with mountain man names on the hike up and here we are acting the part. From right to left: Cliff Bridger, Abe Stottlemyre, and Jeremiah Chesterson.
We hiked to this little pond, called Nymph Lake, with my family. It was covered with lily pads and had a bunch of little ducklings swimming in it.
On Monday, we did a bike ride around Estes Lake in the town of Estes Park. It is a beautiful town and don't be surprised if we retire there some day. The bike ride was memorable.
On Tuesday evening we made a stop at Coors Field in Denver to see the Rockies play the Washington Nationals. The Rockies had zero runs when we left at the 7th inning stretch, but when on to win 8-2... figures.
This weekend we decided to mingle with some of the locals at the Chelsea Community Fair. Chelsea is a quaint little town near Ann Arbor and the home of actor Jeff Daniels. The fair was good times and we enjoyed getting away from the intellectuals of Ann Arbor and spending time with a crowd that's a little more down-to-earth.
The fair had everything you could want including rides, food, and farm animals. Who knows what the deal was with these ducks... George Washington called, he wants his hair back.
One of the highlights of the night was eating a 2 lb banana split while we watched renowned tractors such as "Fat Bottomed Girl" compete in the tractor pull. These hot rod tractors were actually pretty entertaining to watch as they did wheelies and spewed mud at observers behind them. Overall, a great date night and a chance to reconnect with our roots.
