A Quick Trip To Colorado

How much fun can you have on a weekend trip if you spent 20 hours in the car getting there and coming back?  I submit that there is much fun to be had.  How tired will you be?  Try it and find out!  (Click the pictures below to make them larger)

We had the opportunity to go up to Colorado (Springs to be exact) with some wonderful friends for some family (theirs) and fun.  To make sure we had as much time there as possible we decided to leave on Thursday late afternoon, drive until the wee hours of the morning, get some sleep when we arrived and then start the fun.  Something similar happened but the results were drastically different.

There just so happened to be a concert that we all wanted to attend Thursday night so we decided to push back our departure time till after the concert.  So we didn’t leave town until 10 pm CT.  This made for an interesting all-night drive.  We arrived in Colorado Springs at around 7 am MT and crashed for a few hours before getting after it.

Since our friends grew up in Colorado Springs we got a tour of their past which was really cool.  Then we headed to Denver to meet up with some family and see a Rockies game.  Great game!  The Rockies pulled it out in the bottom of the 9th for a 2-1 victory over the Cardinals.  Baseball games are interesting when you are delirious for lack of sleep.

After that we headed for a pizza place in downtown Denver.  Great pizza but there was this table of girls really close that didn’t know what a volume knob was.  And the more they drank, the less conscious they were of their volume.  We didn’t get much conversation in there but the pizza was good.  Drive.  Bed.  Sleep.

After a whole nights sleep (our first since Wednesday night) we went to eat breakfast with another of the parental units.  They live in a very beautiful suburb of Colorado Springs.  We had a wonderful time there and then headed out for some sight-seeing.

There is just something about mountains (especially when you are from the central plains of Texas) that take your breath away.  The majesty of creation has God’s name written all over it.  We first went to the Garden of the Gods, a place of massive and beautiful rock formations.  As we left we decided that a better name for it would be Garden of the One True God.

Next, we traversed a road that took us up into the mountains.  There is so much beauty to see there.  It was an amazing drive that allowed us to see the mountains up close.  The end of this road left us at the base of Helen Hunt falls.  We journeyed to the top, enjoying the scenery around us along the way, and then enjoyed the view.

After some driving around town we visited the Saturday night service of the church our friends attended when they lived in the Springs.  And then it was to the parents house to enjoy some wonderful food and fellowship.  Then to bed for we had a long drive ahead of us on Sunday to get home.

And a long drive it was, but it was fun too.  It is nice to travel with people you like.  I think traveling is one way to figure out how much you like people.  Especially on long trips.  Ten hours in a car at a time will either drive you apart of knit you closer.  I am happy to say that it was the latter that happened.

So, thank you, Bardwells, for allowing us to experience this little vacation with you and your family.  It was a blast!  And remember, there is always a party going on in the USA, you just have to know how to find it you Dumb ‘ole Donkey!  (To get this, you had to be there)

Brian