Back to the Corn

So it was a lot harder to drive away from the Mountains than it was to drive to them. I think it is pretty obvious why that is. Eastern Colorado and Nebraska are flat, just like Kansas, but this time we stayed on I-80, so we didn't get that same feel that we did on the backroads of Kansas. Most of the drive wasn't super interesting. We got to Omaha, and were wondering what the hell were we doing here. Steve was on the phone with this friend Steph from high school who was going to be our hostess for the evening. We were trying to figure out which hotel to stay in, and that was a process, but we finally found a Best Western close to Downtown Omaha. Now I will admit that I had no hope of this being a good time. It was Steve's turn to take the trip somewhere and have it be somewhat of a bust. But he did not pull through. When we got to the Old Market district of Omaha, I liked it. It had a very Old Mid-West feel to it, but was still bustling with cool little shops, restaurants and bars. I know they do this in a bunch of cities, but it really felt Old Cityish here. We ate a Famous Dave's for dinner, I was craving ribs, and Steve got down on some brisket. Later we found out that we should have eaten steak in Omaha, and ribs in St. Louis. I can't keep track of what to eat where, but now I know for next time (if there is a next time in Omaha.) Dinner was good, and we then met up with Steph, her boyfriend, and a few of her friends. I really enjoyed hanging out with this group of people. They were all pretty laid back and nice and seemed genuinely concerned with taking us to the right bars. Now we were there on a Thursday night, but it still wasn't that bad. We started out at the Old Chicago (which I finally figured out was a chain,) then it was onto some microbrewery that I can't remember the name of, but had a bunch of pool tables that were FREE!!! Go figure, I didn't even play, but needless to say I was impressed. Then it was off to an Irish pub that had some acoustic music and was pretty fun. A couple observations in Omaha: 1) a lot of people like to take shots of Rumpelmintze (?) 2): the college world series is apparently prime time to be in Omaha 3): a lot of people are named Joe. Not really a lot, but through the night we were hanging out with two guys, both named Joe. If Joe Gallo had come with us on the trip, I think there would have been way too many Joes for one evening. After a fun night, went back to hotel which we learned wasn't in the greatest part of town. We were very alert and VERY cautious with a trip back to the room, and I think we took all necessary precautions to make sure our safety was never in jeopardy. Last event of the evening was a game of Oregon Trail , where Joe died and Scott got cholera on the first day (see Steve's blog). Tomorrow we make our triumphant return to Chicago, can't wait for that pizza.

The High Point of My Life

Today is a big day.  I keep mentioning all the times that I have driven through the Rockies to go skiing.  Every time I have gone through there, I am mesmerized by the enormous peaks.  I always wanted to get to the top and see what an exhilarating feeling it would be.  Today is my chance.  We were going to wake up at 6 AM, but I woke up at around 5:30 AM and couldn't sleep anymore.  I tapped Steve on the little piece of forehead that was exposed in his sleeping bag and he popped right up, then we both gave our morning ritual farts (It must have been the altitude.)  After a quick tent pack up, and then letting the car warm up so the FROST on the windshield could be defrosted, we drove up to the trail head.  Now while the campsite was below treeline, the trail head was not.  When we pulled up to it, we saw Mt. Bierstadt staring us right in the face.  With the challenge lying ahead of us and our ridiculous, but practical, outfits (shorts over long underwear), we threw on our packs and headed for the summit.  The hike started our descending through a valley of marshland, and small lakes (ponds?).  The were boardwalks built over this marshland, which made the beginning easy.   This was a good warm up.  We then came to our first obstacle of the day.  There was a small creek, but because of the late snow melt, it was actually quite large and flowing.  The rocks that seemed to normally serve as the crossing were under water, but about 10 yards down stream there were 2 large branches laid between the two banks.  These branches did not look very sturdy and there was still frost on them.  As I was contemplating which route to take, Steve just went for it and took the branches.  I guess that was what I was going to do.  It wasn't as bad as I thought, but I definitely did think I was going to take a swim.  OK, obstacle #1...conquered.  Now it was just uphill trail, but the trail was very well maintained for this section.  Our surroundings were mostly brush, until we got to around 12,200 ft and then it just turned into meadows.  Even though they were not exploding with color from wildflowers, like I have seen in pictures, I was still satisfied with hiking through this high alpine meadow.  As we ascended higher and higher towards the rising sun, we kept looking back to see the view behind us.  Every time we would take break and turn around, another range of gorgeous peaks appeared over the horizon.  The altitude wasn't awful, but at times my head was throbbing a little.  When this would happen, I would just stop for a second, and take a few deep breaths, letting the relatively low levels of oxygen in my lungs and give my body what it needed.  Up and up, we kept going.  We got to the point where the sun was behind the summit again, so temperatures dropped making it a little chilly, reminding us that we were now over 13,000 ft.  The peak was a silhouette against the the crisp, blue Colorado sky, making it seemed as mystifying as I have always imagined these peaks to be.  At this point, most of the trail was iced over from the snowmelt freezing the previous night.  This proved to be tricky in some spots, but neither of us took any spills.  This snowmelt did have an origin, and we reached it very soon.  The initial snowfields that we encountered were tough because the snow was frozen solid.  Some of them we navigated around, while others we kicked into to make footholds for ourselves.  Feeling good and getting closer to the summit, we now stand about 13,500 ft above sea level.  This altitude is apparently the height that people "hit the wall."  I think most of that theory may be psychosomatic, so I tried not to think about it.  I did think Steve was going to have issues with it, but he hammered right through it.  OK we are not getting up to the ridge that will lead us to the peak.  The snowfields have been replaced by large rock fields, but we still follow the trail using the cairns that  are scattered across the mountain.  13,800 ft, it is now within our grasps.  The last push to the summit was somewhat daunting.  On one side, was a snowfield that dropped off like the end of the world, and the other was large boulders that would require some handy scrambling.  This was awesome.  Who would have thought that all those hours of my childhood playing on rocks and in the woods would be helping reach this goal in my life?  Even with my shoulder still hurting a little, I was able to scramble through the rocks with no major problems.  I could tell that Steve was feeling the same rush that I was, as we both pushed toward the top.  Then finally we heaved ourselves, over the last few boulders and there it was.  We had made it!  There was a small PVC tube for people to sign their names in as they summitted, I felt very proud to right my name in there.  I had just summitted my first 14er, and was currently standing at 14,060 ft.  The views were awesome and the feeling was incredible.  Even though I was sore and still had a headache, there was nothing that could ruin this moment for me.  A couple had summitted shortly after us and they pointed out all the other peaks that were visible from our vantage point.  Another little bonus on the summit, was that we got to see a marmot.  Steve has a weird obsession for larger, wild rodents so his life was complete at this point.  After several pictures, some video, and capturing this moment as best I could, it was time to descend.  Now descending is never that much fun, but this time it was different.  Remember those snowfields from earlier?  We'll this time we flew through those, literally.  There were paths in the snow where we unstrapped our packs, put our butts in the snow, and just went for a ride.  We were both giggling like little kids, but who wouldn't if you sledding on your ass 14,000 ft above sea level.  It was awesome.  Other people that were climbing saw us doing this, and they were cheering us on.  We are pretty sure, they will all be doing it when they descend.  I tried to take some more pictures before we got below the views, and with the sun a little higher in the sky, the shots were great.  Steve went into his delusional state, and started running down the trails.  People thought he was crazy.  When we got down to the car, our adrenaline rushes were coming to an end, and every pain and ache and lack of oxygen that we had faced for the previous 5 hours all hit us at the same time.  Now we were miserable and hurting.  But that sense of accomplishment was still there, and it will always be there.  Back to civilization we went.  Rest of the day was spent in a hotel, and then we met up with Liz (from Frederick/Las Vegas) and Caitlin (NOT from Kansas, but friend from UD.)  Liz was driving to Las Vegas to start her new job and Caitlin was traveling with her.  It was nice to see some familiar faces.  We ate dinner with them and then went out in downtown Denver, which was a very cool city.  We went to some bar where every time you ordered a drink, the bartender would flip a coin.  If you guess right, the drink was free.  I liked the idea, I liked the bar, so overall it was fun.  Steve was having a good time until he got into a secretive scuffle, and then we left.  When we left, it was pouring outside.  Now we have not had any significant rain on this trip, and last year it took us until the second to last day to get rain.  I look at this two ways.  One, Liz and Caitlin are bad luck.  But we hung out with Liz before and there was no rain.  On the other hand, Steve and I had just finished all that we had set out to do.  With this trip and last years combined, it is going to be hard for me to find things that I feel like I need to do.  Things are good, but it was cold, windy and rainy, and I wanted to go to bed.  We said our quick, wet goodbyes, and then went to our hotel and died.  Driving to Omaha in the morning, we were battered, bruised, beaten, but most importantly feeling more alive than ever after 4 days of Colorado.

Colorado Day 2

Waking up, Steve and I were both more sore than we were when we went to sleep.  Neither of us slept that well because of our aches and pains from the previous day's adventures.  Boo hoo, it doesn't matter how much we hurt, it was time to move on.  We woke up around 7:30 to drive to Kodi Rafting Post in Buena Vista, CO.  Now everytime I've been in CO, the only reason I have ever ventured off of I-70 was to head to a ski mountain.  This time I was going to somewhere I had no idea what to expect.  On the way, we drove through Leadville, which claims to have the highest everything because it is the highest town in the country at 10,200 ft.  After Leadville, we hit the headwaters of the Arkansas River, which we were going to be rafting on in a couple hours.  This was pretty cool because it was just flat plains surrounded by gorgeous peaks.  And this scenery continued all the way to Buena Vista, where the peaks were the collegiate peaks.  They are a range of 14,000 ft peaks, that are pretty popular for hiking.  After checking in and Steve getting changed into his wetsuit/drytop outfit, we loaded onto an old school bus and headed for the put-in location.  Apparently, this is the most commercially used stretch of river in the world.  It seemed like it because there was tour company after tour company set up along this area.  So after meeting our guide, Kristen, we headed into the water.  Overall, the experience was fun, but Steve and I were expecting non-stop intense rapids, just to continue with the theme of our trip.  Instead it was a series of rapids, followed by calm water.  I guess it was ideal then for beginners, but it was still a good time.  The best rapid was called "Big Drop."  When we hit this, our raft went pretty much vertical and I thought we were going to flip.  Steve thought the same so he decided to lean into the middle of the boat when we hit it.  What a baby.  I got soaked from some of the splashes, and even though the water was ~50 degrees, it felt so good.  The trip ended, we got a ride back to the car, and then headed to Biggies Subs in Buena Vista for lunch.  After lunch it was onto our 14er.  We got thrown off course a little because of road closures, so what should have been an 80 minute drive turned into an over 2 hr drive.  But when you are used to driving 8 hrs/day, this was no big deal.  We finally got to our exit and the road for the trail head.  Now last year we ran into some sketchy roads to find our trail heads.  This one was the worst, it was actually unpassable for the old Ford Focus.  It was uphill, and washed out like crazy, it seemed like only a Jeep or high clearance 4x4 of some sort would make it.  So we couldn't make it to the trailhead, hmm.  We didn't really know what to do, so we headed to the closest exit with a hotel and tried to sit in the parking lot and get wireless internet to find which other mountain we should go to.  After some slow research, we found a hike that was pretty close.  The road to this one was passable but had construction and was a very slow drive.  When we finally got to our campsite, it was well worth it because it very pretty besides the swarms of mosquitoes.  We set up camp, chilled for a while, ate our first dehydrated meals, made a fire, had some philosophical talk, and then went to sleep.  Basically, a typical camping night, but it was fun.  The alarm was set for 6 AM to start our climb to the top of the world.

The Day of Hurt

So our first full day in CO, what were going to do?  Obviously, the answer is everything.  We started off the day very ambitious and went for a trail run on Ptarmigan Trail, located near the hotel.  Now we might not have given ourselves enough time to acclimate, but after approximately 20 to 25 strides on the trail we were both winded.  Now it was pretty steep, but still pretty embarrassing.  We "hiked" up the steep part of the trail until it leveled out and then started running again.  We didn't want to push it too hard since we had a full day planned, so after 20 minutes we headed back to the car.  Up next?  Mountain biking on Keystone Mountain.  I was pretty excited for this, while Steve seemed a little nervous.  We got to town, rented our bikes, bought our lift tickets, and headed up.  Now for sake of time, we bought the lift tickets that would send us and our bikes up to the top of the mountain, so we would just be doing downhill.  At the top, we decided to just do the run called Girl Scout.  Now what could be easier than something called Girl Scout?  Well, it wasn't that easy.  My theory is that it was a green because it was very tight, with a lot of turns and that forced people to go slow.  After Steve got a little more comfortable on the bike, we picked up the pace.  This may have been a mistake.  Steve was the first to take a spill, and somehow went over the handle bars and tumbled a little, but he was OK.  He even got up and started running around after his crash.  Steve took the second spill, and this was just an awkward crash where he tried to stop where he shouldn't have and ended up crashing on top of my bike.  I took the last spill, and I'm not really sure what happened, but like Steve I went over the handle bars and got a nice bruise on my shoulder (not my bad one.)  After 2 descents of the mountain, 2.5 hours and 14 miles we decided to call it quits.  Battered and bruised we headed to our final activity of the day, a round of golf at Breckenridge.  Now Steve hadn't played in a while, and his hands were pretty beat up from biking.  My shoulder was pretty sore, so swinging wasn't the most comfortable thing to do, but we were doing it anyway.  The course was nice, we played pretty poorly with our neon yellow balls (which we bought by accident), but still had a good time.  That night we were supposed to camp out, but we whimped out and got a hotel.  Actually, we got 2 hotels because hotels.com charged me for a hotel that I didn't want (DO NOT USE HOTELS.COM)  The night was just a short break because tomorrow at 7:30 AM we have to drive to Buena Vista, CO for some white water rafting.  When in Colorado...

Flatness Before the Mountains

So, after saying our goodbyes to Caitlyn, again, we hit the road to drive about 10 hours to Keystone, CO.  Now I was excited to drive through Kansas, just to see the flatness of the Plains and be able to drive fast.  Our original plan was to head for I-70, but after staying on the backroads for a little while, we decided this route would be more fun.  I definitely got more than enought flatness, but it was a beautiful day out and nothing beats the open road with the windows down and the music playing.  I took about the first 6.5 hours of the drive, and once we got a little into CO Steve took over the driving.  Now he was a little jealous that I was pushing the speedometer a little, and he wanted a taste of it.  At first, he was having fun with it, but then we hit the small town of Hugo, CO.  Yes, Hugo, CO, a town which no one has heard of, but has a very strict speed limit.  As we approached any town, the speed limit gradually decreases, and Steve did not decrease rapidly enough.  We got pulled over, but we couldn't be too upset about it because we this was the first ticket received after driving 8,000 miles last year, and almost 2,000 this year.  Needless to say, the remaining drive to Keystone was a little slower.  But coming up to the Rockies was very cool.  Even though I have done this drive numerous times in the winter, it had a different feeling to it.  Maybe it was just the season, or maybe it was the fact that I drove here and was going to do all the things I've ever wanted to do in CO.  When we got to the hotel, I was a little delusional from the long drive and I'm sure the altitude contributed to it as well.  We checked in and then went to a steak house for dinner.  This steak house, Mint Steakhouse, had a twist to it; it was a grill-your-own-meat restaurant.  It was actually pretty cool, and Steve and I cooked the best steaks we have ever had.  After eating a 16 oz. sirloin, I was brought back to planet Earth and we went back to the hotel, planned out our next day, and fell asleep in no time.

Road Trip Tradition

Waking up in St. Louis it felt like a morning to run.  Right next to the hotel was Forest park, which is apparently the largest intercity park, beating Central Park.  We thought we'd check it out and even though the weather said it was 74 out, it was still hot and humid.  And as Steve and I have both experienced before, running after a night of drinking is not the best condition to run in.  So with heat, humidity, and residual alcohol in our bodies we hit the trail.  Our run was about 40 minutes and showed us most of the park, and it was very cool.  Nice trails for bikers and runners and a lot of activity happening.  It even had an 18-hole golf course.  Got back to the hotel, showered, ate our upgraded breakfast, and hit the road for Emporia, KS.  Last year I got to hang out with my friend Caitlyn who I met in Italy 2 years ago.  Last year she was in Lubbock, TX which was on our way, and this year she lives in Emporia, KS, which again is on the way.  The drive to Emporia was kinda boring but still not as flat as I expected.  When we got to Emporia, Caitlyn gave us the tour of the town (which was brief) and then we went to "Old Rum's" Liquor Store.  It was a funny liquor store with a giant pirate on the sign.  For some reason we were very amused by Old Rum's and I think it may have been Steve's highlight of the trip thus far.  After some burgers for dinner, we went out for a bar crawl in Emporia.  First stop was the Dugout, which involved some pool and Steve turning into super talkative Steve.  We then went to my favorite bar that I've ever been to, JMo's.  I was pretty excited and got some pictures with the sign in the front.  The bar itself, was what you would expect a little bar in Emporia to be like.  After a drink there, it was onto Beer:30.  Now apparently this is the hot spot in Emporia.  I was impressed because it had a band, multiple bars and cheap drinks.  After that, the night was finalized with some pizza and getting a ride back to Caitlyn's (tell Katie I say thanks again.)  Steve slept on the futon that Joe had slept on last year, and my seniority in friendship gave me the right to the pull out sofabed.  And so ends another epic night of hanging out with Caitlyn in some funny, little town.  

Beer, A Giant Arch, and Baseball

So we got on the road around 9 o'clock and headed off for our short drive to St. Louis (~350 miles, but who's keeping track?)  We started off going into Kentucky, on purpose this time, and then headed through Indiana, Illinois, and finally got to St. Louis.  The drive wasn't bad, but nothing really stood out.  The first thing that stood out was seeing the Arch.  It was quite a sight to see, and I never knew how big it actually was.  But for the time being, we had bigger things to do.  We went straight to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery about 10 minutes outside the city.  Right before we drove into St. Louis, we stopped at a gas station to fuel up and when I went in for some water, I saw a 24 oz. can of Keystone Light and Milwaukee's Best Light.  Now I knew we were going on the brewery tour of the home of Natural Light, so I figured let's buy these two giant beers and maybe after the tour we will compare taste and see who can boast the ultimate cheap beer award!  When we got to the brewery, we decided to tailgate and drink the two big beers before we started the tour.  One of the better ideas we have had on the trip.  We both agreed the tour was better than the Miller tour we did last year.  The tour seemed to have a lot more history to it and overall more fun.  After the tour, we got to taste 2 beers, but they did not offer Natural Light, so our experiment did not work, but we still got 2 free beers so I can't complain.  We then set off for the Arch.  Once we got to the Arch Park the weather was beautiful, a little hot, but it was great.  We had a little photo shoot with the arch and then took off for the stadium.  We were planning on tailgating for the game, but found out that doesn't really happen in this city, weird.  But there are bars around the stadium so we figured we would find one and post up until game time.  For some reason, Cardinals fans line up outside of the stadium 2.5 hours before game time.  Every gate had probably 400 people waiting to get in, and it was about 95 degrees out.  I guess they are just that hard core, or maybe they just don't have anything else to do with their time.  So we found a bar, that seemed to be owned by the Cards, so we got one beer there and then headed to the next bar we found, Hooters.  HAHA!!  I just think Hooters is a funny place to go.  But we were there for a while, had a few beers and then headed to the game.  The stadium was actually really cool, for some reason all the seats just seemed closer to the action compare to Citi Bank Park.  The game was actually boring, with no HR's and maybe 2 doubles, besides that it was all singles and walks.  Cards lost 3-1, boo hoo.  Let's go Phils!!  We then headed to the hotel, where we got an upgrade/downgrade.  We signed up for 2 queens, but got 1 king and a free continental breakfast.  At that point, we were both exhausted from a great day and just went to bed to get another early start in the AM.  

ST. LOUIS = GREAT DAY

And now we officially have entered the West...