Ahhh my weekend. Began with the fantasticness of my birthday, ended with the fantasticness of my patriotic boyfriend wishing a couple of Brits "Happy Fourth!" Oh irony, how I love thee.
Saturday morning our wild little adventures began with a breakfast sandwich on our way to Mt. Bierstadt. The poor woman working kept telling us that she was new so was still learning the ropes and was all sorts of flustered trying to make people's egg sandwiches, but nothing could detract my attention from her black and perfectly penciled-on eyebrows. I guess she either pulled a Whoopie or a Britney one day and decided there was too much hair on her head (face) so gone went the brows. Regardless, the sandwich was OK.
We took Bierstadt by storm, passing dogs in kitten mittens and dads packed high with babies. After a ceremonial beer at the 14,000-ft summit, we quickly realized our mistake . . . climbing down jagged rocks at a high elevation and steepness is a little trickier with some booze coursing through your body. I'm gonna go ahead and blame my graceful fall into the river on the delicious beer I drank. Either that, or the fact that I'm insanely foolish (and proud). Que sera . . .
The next events came in more of a whirlwind: lunch with parents, mad dash to the Holiday Inn, drive so sweet on western I-70 that it was actually maddening, using google to find a spot to set up camp, McDonaldsing in Aspen (who does that? oh yeah, we do) and watching people throw pine cones to their toy pups on a rugby pitch (remember . . . Aspen). These dogs had names like Leopold, Jiacamo, Lily and Lord only knows what else. At one point we heard a woman yell to her beagle, "Leopold, I'd like you to come over here right now." Lady. Don't name your dog Leopold if you want him to come to you. AND, let's be real here: the standard "come" will suffice, thank you.
Next we stumbled upon the Cathedral Lake hike and I can't explain how happy I am that we did. It was probably the best part of the trip, closely followed by . . . what happened next. Once we descended from the Cathedral Lake hike, it was most evident that we needed a shower. So we booked it to Glenwood Springs for lunch and while there we tried to come up with a shower plan. OK people, why is finding a place to shower so hard to do? We went to Hotel Colorado to see if one of my sorority sisters who works there could hook us up. No luck. We creeped around a couple hotels to see if they had locker rooms (I'm not exactly proud of having done this . . . ). No luck. We tried to get into an "exclusive" gym. No luck. So we gave up on Glenwood and decided to book it to Leadville in hopes of finding at least a bucket of fresh water to sponge off in. Well, thank heavens for google and for the Leadville Hostel where we bought the most magical $3 showers in the history of the world.
After that, we made friends with some local bar-goers by picking a rad juke box mix (we had drunks dancing all over the place--just fantastic), set up camp and sunk into our sweet new camping chairs with a box of pizza and some delicious beers. Nothing better. Then to wrap up the weekend, we attended the most crazed Fourth of July parade I never thought was possible. Seriously, it was mayhem. There were men walking around in boxes, children darting all sorts of directions on scooters and grannies throwing candy at small children. There were a few moments when I feared for our lives. Thankfully the parade ended after the 5-minutes of uncivilized fanfare and we were able to head up to Mt Massive.
A few hours later we were back on I-70 heading east and what do you know . . . a fruit truck overturns sending apples flying across the interstate and backing up holiday traffic for miiiiiiiles. And so ended our wild adventure through Central CO, with a three-hour crawl back to the great mile high citay.
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