Travels of the Blue Jacket

Today was our first full day in Colorado to visit with Craig’s family and friends.  Yesterday we flew in and took it pretty easy after got in.  We just relaxed and napped.  That night we went and met Craig’s childhood friend Jason and his girlfriend Jen who live in Boulder.  We all went to downtown Boulder to find something for dinner because Craig and I hadn’t eaten since early in our travels and we were pretty hungry.  On our way there we ran into a funny church…it was named Church of Christ, Scientist.  The funny part about it was that the period was actually part of the name of the church that was on the top and front of the church.  We weren’t sure what the period was for.  There was a festival going on down on Pearl Street but it looked like it was starting to wrap up by the time that we got there.  There was only a massage therapist and face painter left, weird thing was that it was the same booth (strange huh).  Jen suggested that we go to Pasta Jay’s for dinner after we had narrow it down that we wanted Italian food (that is one of Craig’s favorites and my arm can always be twisted to have Italian ).  It was a cute little place with checkered table cloths and $2 draft beers or $3 house wine while you waited..my kind of place.  The food was really good and it was fun to hang out with everyone.  I had some awesome creamy pesto gnocci, which you all know is my favorite!!

Today we drove on Hwy 14 from Fort Collins to Walden through the Cache la Poudre.  It was only about 100 miles but it takes a very long time (3.5 hours) cause you are driving through the mountains with lots of twists and turns.  The scenery was beautiful and the river was hopping!  There were tons of guys and gals out there with their kayaks and river rafts.  It looked like fun but I am not so sure I would be brave enough to get in the river in a kayak on my own.  Craig said that the river wasn’t very rough where we were seeing all the people in it but then we passed on part that looked really tough.  There were some people that looked like they were surveying it and trying to decide if they wanted to get in or not, but we didn’t stick around long enough to see if they did or not.  When we got to Walden we ate at the River Rock Cafe. Craig likes to find misprints or typos or whatever and at the River Rock Cafe he found this gem:  Our desserts change daily cobblers, cake and ice cream. 

These three pictures are from a stop on the road when we were almost there.  As we got higher and higher there was more snow to be seen as you can see in the third picture.

After eating dinner we headed home and our mission was to see a moose!  Craig loves moose and they are a shy animal so they are a lot harder to spot than an elk or bison.  We actually were driving back through a part that was known for moose and we were looking intently for them when we actually saw one standing in the road.  We tried to get up to him but by the time that we got up to him he was ready to take off again.  Craig tried to get his camera out but didn’t succeed.  I did manage to nab one picture of the moose but it was the backside of him   After that we pulled off onto another road so that we could drive about 5 miles down a dirt road to an area where you are supposed to be able to see lots of moose.  Unfortunately we didn’t find any there and it was getting dark.  As we kept driving toward home we found two moose on the side of the road.  I had been on moose watch on my side of the car and I actually found two! I was very proud of myself.  It was getting dark though so it was really hard to get pictures of them.  They were all blurry because of the lighting but I included one for you anyway!

Here is what Craig is like when he is tired of me snapping pics of him….he has all these pictures of me making funny facial expressions so I try to get funny ones of him too (always good to have blackmail, right)…