Well, isn't that kind of expected for your trips?So the day didn't start as expected.
Yeah, I wouldn't buy that either. I mean if you don't buy the extra seat how would they even be able to reserve it so that you can "just tell them?"They gave us a whole bunch of stuff about how we didn't need to buy the third seat and she cancelled it but all we had to do was tell them that we needed an extra seat and they would give it to us. Not sure how much I believe that! And after the last trip, I don't!
Oooooh! The only bad thing about a car collection is that they won't let you drive any of them.The Clive Cussler Car Collection.
It all looked fantastic!When our lemon cake and butter cake arrived I was in so much of a food coma that I couldn't even take a bite.
Yeah, that's definitely a new one! Most states probably have an open container law that wouldn't allow them to serve you and then let you leave with it.We even took what was left of our wine togo. Leftover wine? I've never heard of such a thing before!
Oh wow... That's always frustrating, but especially when the restaurant isn't very busy and you feel like it should be a lot quicker!I should have paid more attention to the reviews where people said service was slow, because it was like the sloths at the DMV in Zootopia were cooking and serving the food.
I'm glad you were able to find some ginger ale and that it helped. I'm sure the combination of altitude and riding in a car up and down and around mountain curves just had you a little bit queasy.Eventually we came upon a gas station with a mini mart and while they didn't have any cold or individual bottles, I was able to get a 2 liter bottle of Ginger Ale and a cup full of ice. I sipped on this as we came down the mountain and finally I started to feel human again, even hungry!
The night before we left a friend of mine in band asked, “what Disney attraction is in Denver?”
To which I replied @jedijill!
John Williams would be conducting three concerts over Labor Day weekend.
As we waited to board it became obvious that a lot of children were going to be on the flight. The family seated next to us had a rather rambunctious toddler and I hoped all the running around she was doing would tire her out and she'd sleep the whole trip. Nope.
From the moment the door of the plane closed the kid proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs.
The chicken and fixing were awesome and we left stuffed and taking home leftovers.
After we gave up on our lunches, Jill brought two kinds of fry bread to the table, one coated in cinnamon and sugar and another with Berry jam on top. They were both delicious, but there was no way we could finish and finally we surrendered.
Dinner tonight was going to be at Del Frisco's. If you've read my previous reports, you'll know how much Fran and I love this place!
Onion Rings
Thick Bacon
A Ribeye Steak
Creamed Spinach
Mach Choux Corn
Potatoes au Gratin
The drive to Estes Park followed this river much of the way.
And to this Southern California gal, snow in August was a shocker! Even when I knew it was 10,000 ft or higher.
We drove around the grounds of this hotel, The Stanley where Stephen King’s inspiration for The Shining came from.
I should have paid more attention to the reviews where people said service was slow, because it was like the sloths at the DMV in Zootopia were cooking and serving the food.
We got an order of their Tater Tots which I thought were pretty tasty.
Neither Jill nor Fran liked their Beer Cheese soup. It was way too thin and had a funny taste to it.
It became clear that we wouldn't make our reservation when we ran into construction traffic at 1:30PM. We sat here for half an hour waiting for our turn to go through a one lane portion of the road.
After we passed the construction I counted the cars that were lined up to go through the one lane section and lost count at around 124.
And we were above the tree line by now.
Fran asked us if we wanted to climb this hill, but there was no way I was going to exert any more physical energy at this elevation, my head was somewhat spinning already!
Jill told us that the posts along the road are to help the snow plows know where the road is when it’s time to clear it in the spring.
I sipped on this as we came down the mountain and finally I started to feel human again, even hungry!
I got the Peach Crostada which was the seasonal dish.
I'm so happy you guys came to visit me! I love showing Colorado off to my out of town friends!
Jill in CO
I'd really like to, actually.
Reminds me... need to email you...
Woot!
Or should that be Toot!
Jill is an attraction?
whoa. She was really adamant!
Good thing Fran was so adamant!
So you were aiming for 8:15PM. So... leaving at 6:30AM gives you... just under 14 hours to get there.
Wow. You said LA traffic was bad... I didn't know it was that bad!!!
Now you know what to do when you want her to move.
Hmmm.... two thoughts.
hasty clothes. wonder if that will getcha.
feeding the cats.
I retract my comment about the 14 hours. It'll take you at least 10 hours just to feed all the cats.
So an hour door to door. That's not bad at all!
Hmmm... not quite my experience there...
Uh, huh. Yeah, I wouldn't believe that either.
"You don't need to buy the third seat!"
Followed by:
"The flight is fully booked. If you needed a third seat you should have booked it."
Well, of course. It took you an hour to get there, so you still had 15 hours to go!
(I'm just gonna keep milking this. Don't mind me.)
Oh, dear Lord.
You didn't bring your noise canceling headphones? Sounds like the ultimate product test.
You should have. Maybe even a triple. That would quiet her down.
Oh? Come up here for a visit and I'll take you to a place that's a bit of a secret, but has the best fried chicken in town, is cooked to order, but doesn't take 30 minutes.
You can pass that over to me, then.
No. It wasn't.
Or maybe it was.
No. Freaking. Way.
No kidding! I would love to see this!
Interesting! I've had bison... usually in a burger... but never ribs.
I can see you waving a little white flag.
As am I.
Midnight shift as I write this. Only 7 more hours to go!
So.... you hadn't packed for rain? Or you had but it was nice out?
Those things are huge!
<drool>
Sorry about that. Lemme just wipe up.
whoops! Obviously an error of some sort.
You don't know me at all.
Awwww... poor sleepy Alison.
She's really going all out for you guys!
She's a keeper.
To this Northerner too. Living in the prairies, we don't see mountains.
We see horizon.
Thanks for that! Never knew that. Did know he'd stayed there, but not those details.
Wow! There's tons!
Uh, oh..... "in theory"...
Ugh.
No surprise it's packed if no one ever gets their food.
You're not exactly selling this place, Alison.
Looks pretty good.
Might as well and...
... that one's especially nice.
The elusive High Altitude Siren.
Interesting! And look how high they are!
We had markers up in Churchill, (and not that high... maybe 3 feet) but they were so that in case of whiteout conditions, you could pick your way back to town by crawling from one marker to the next. Just had to remember to keep the white ones on the right.
Sorry to hear that.
Huh. I wonder why that one was banded.
Alison. That photo is postcard worthy.
Whoops... and... crap.
Look! Teenagers!
That looked like a ton of food!
That looks (and sounds!) delicious!
I love your trip to Colorado! Now I know where to go if I'm there, and yay for DISMeets!
It looks so beautiful there, and the food you ate looks so good! Starting from that fried chicken to order, plus the fry bread, yum!
And Del Friscos is soooo good. Your pictures of the mountains are gorgeous!
Wow, your trip to Colorado looks amazing. The scenery is really stunning. The food looked delicious, too.
Corinna
Very much enjoying reading about your Colorado adventure with Jill
Too cool about a Clive Cussler car museum!!!
Mom and her boyfriend went to The Stanley and had dessert. She said it was beautiful inside. I enjoyed that snippet about Stephen King.
Horrendous to sit in that traffic
The moose picture is awesome!
Sorry you weren’t feeling the best. Glad the ginger ale helped.
What beautiful views! Looks like you had lots of good eats.
I wouldn't mind staying there, it was actually somewhat reasonable for such a nice hotel.
Well, isn't that kind of expected for your trips?
Yeah, I wouldn't buy that either. I mean if you don't buy the extra seat how would they even be able to reserve it so that you can "just tell them?"
Oooooh! The only bad thing about a car collection is that they won't let you drive any of them.
It all looked fantastic!
Yeah, that's definitely a new one! Most states probably have an open container law that wouldn't allow them to serve you and then let you leave with it.
Oh wow... That's always frustrating, but especially when the restaurant isn't very busy and you feel like it should be a lot quicker!
I'm glad you were able to find some ginger ale and that it helped. I'm sure the combination of altitude and riding in a car up and down and around mountain curves just had you a little bit queasy.
Works for me!
That would be such a cool experience.
I imagine this is what people think when they see us board with Drew.
If nothing else, pick her up and wander up and down the aisle a bit, just to change the scenery.
That looks amazing!
Lesson learned--next meal, just skip straight to this part.
Someday, I'll try that one out!
Yes, please.
Isn't that beautiful! Jill advised us to go in the same way, and I'm glad we did.
It feels so exotic!
Never read the book, but I did see the movie!
Those look pretty awesome.
That's disappointing. I thought it was hard to mess up a beer cheese soup.
Oh, that's so painful. We had the same experience in Yellowstone. The roads are usually very narrow and there's nowhere else to go--no detour routes. Summer is usually the only time they can do any road work, too.
Such a beautiful place! I loved it there.
Great shot of you!
Yuck. I read somewhere that the key to fighting altitude sickness was to stay hydrated.
There was still some snow piled by the roads when we were there in late June.
Great sighting and nice shots!
Thank goodness.
That looks amazing.
Ghosts come free with your stay!
Jill in CO
Where is that train emoji?
In a sense....
Please....its been fixed.
Not sure it's worth the stress.
Can't wait to hear about it!
I'm not minding you at all.
It was when I posted on FB about the baby when one of my friends suggested them.
Coming to visit sounds fun, but not sure I could convince Fran to visit the prarie....and it would have to be in summer.
Yes Freaking way.
I had packed for colder weather and it was mostly nice and warm unless we were over 10,000 ft, but we didn't stay at that height very long. In fact it was cooler in Florida on my trip last month than it was in Denver.
I love creamed spinach!
We see mountains except when they are obscured with smoke.
Yeah, kind of like the Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.
Wouldn't you freeze to death in the process?
I also considered that one when figuring out where to put Fran and I in whacky situations, but I didn't think it was believable that we would be walking on water!
Yes it would.
We actually have beautiful summers up here.
And we do have things to see.
No mountains though.
In a truck Alison! In a truck!
(And I say "truck" because... I don't think anyone owns a car up there.)
I guess I took the word "crawling" literally!
We needed somewhere to go in the summer that wouldn’t be overly hot and thought about visiting Jill in Denver! The hotel was substantially cheaper near Jill’s house than in Houston, and so was the rental car, so the trip was planned!
So the day didn't start as expected.
I left the bedroom curtains open when we went to sleep to aid in our waking. Imagine my surprise when we woke at 6:15 to a bright bedroom. My first thought was, “Why did I leave the curtains open? What is going on this morning that is special?”
We were out the door by 7:15, a little later than we planned for, even if running ½ an hour late.
I really like this Pre-chek thing, it takes no time to get through security!
When we got to the gate, they hadn't even boarded the flight before ours, so we sat patiently playing my game and her reading on the tablet.
Ham and Cheese Panini from one of the overpriced airport shops
The family seated next to us had a rather rambunctious toddler and I hoped all the running around she was doing would tire her out and she'd sleep the whole trip.
Fran shamed me out of ordering the drink. A
As soon as the stewardess left, the kid started again and never stopped howling the rest of the trip.
. It was a Gimlet not a Gibson.
The Clive Cussler Car Collection. If you've read his books, you know Dirk Pitt has a collection of cars outside his headquarters and often chooses a classic car to drive on his adventures. The cars featured in the books had a copy of the book in which they were mentioned in front of said car.
Good choice. Last time I had one was on the Res in some podunk village served by a little old Navajo lady. I about died and went to Heaven.before deciding on Indian Tacos
I got a shredded Bison taco with beans, tomatoes, some kind of salsa, cheese, sour cream and green chilies on the side. It turns out they weren't really spicy at all so I dumped them all over the taco. Yummy!
Dinner tonight was going to be at Del Frisco's
We even took what was left of our wine togo. Leftover wine? I've never heard of such a thing before!
We drove around the grounds of this hotel, The Stanley where Stephen King’s inspiration for The Shining came from. He stayed at this hotel for one night before it closed up for the season. You can thank Wikipedia for this:
In that case, yes. You would die.
Either freeze, or be eaten.
Coin toss.
That's all the convincing I'd need to deem it better!
Wait! You forgot it was a travel day?? I rarely even sleep the night before travel.
I got that too for the first time last flight. It was nice, but we both didn't get it, so I ended up waiting anyways. Ah well...
I love this scenario. Having too much time is so much better than too little.
So it was a mere $158.32 then?
See? Your instincts were right.
And I've tried neither. Hmmm... April??
May I please get Plaza chicken? Pretty please? It's been quite a while since I've had fried chicken?
Oh. My. Goodness. I've read almost all of them, and adore antique cars. I need to go there.
Good choice. Last time I had one was on the Res in some podunk village served by a little old Navajo lady. I about died and went to Heaven.
Ummmm.... yum.
It just keeps going.....
I think this is becoming more popular now. I've seen that done recently in fact.
And if you come up here and visit, I can show you where they actually FILMED the outdoor portions of it. It's a gorgeous hotel/lodge that I'd love to stay at someday!
https://www.timberlinelodge.com/
And that's why I don't visit cold weather climates if I can avoid it.
Yesterday's long day sort of took a toll on us. I needed a hot bath to try and soothe my muscles as well as a shower. I was done by 8:20, but Fran didn't start moving for almost another hour or so.
Jill stopped at Starbucks again
along with a glass of V8
There it is, off in the distance.
We had thought about taking the train
They gave us this map so that you could chart your progress up the mountain.
Someone had a sense of humor.
Just keep climbing.
This rock formation was really cool.
The view became more and more spectacular the higher we climbed.
We stopped at the halfway point for a bio break and to check out the gift shop.
Fran wants one of these.
These were crazy people
Looking back down on the crazy people climbing the rocks.
And then we saw a Big Horn sheep.
Still snow here too!
Jill bought us a half a dozen donuts. They weren’t bad, not the best donuts in the world, but I think they just want you to be impressed that at that altitude they can make something that tastes good.
Fran and I decided to hop on.
No, seriously, I actually made that picture after I learned something in photoshop that I used for a future update on the WDW trip report. For those of you reading along on both, when I get to the picture that I made that for, I want to see how many of you are paying attention and can spot the doctored shot!
Then we made our way back down. We saw several marmants, but this was the only one who would pose for me.
Once we were back in the car drove around via the various one way roads. They have a little “course” laid out that takes you by the various outcroppings. It’s a pretty interesting area and Fran would like to go back someday and spend more time exploring when it’s not raining.
Fran wanted to check out the Visitor's center and found more stuff to buy.
They had this model of the outcroppings, kind of cool how they are just randomly there.
I got some fudge and so did she,
headed back via the Harley Store in Colorado Springs
Today we were planning on having dinner at Jill’s house and she was cooking for us.
Plus I got some Wisconsin Cheese curds and Elk Bratwurst to enjoy at home.
Jill had prepared quite a feast with flat iron steak, corn, wax beans, baked beans, and a lovely dessert with sugar macerated peaches and ice cream.
We only had three total and Fran decided that even if we don't need them on the way there, I should always bring four suitcases so that we have extra room for souvenirs on the way home.
Fran went to the business center computers to see about things we could do on the way to the airport.
What?????
We are strange and prefer to wait at our gate killing time than cutting it close when it comes to flights.