Colorado Road Trip 2014

My girlfriend and I decided to do some road-trippin’ in my new Subaru…  Check out the photos and this video.

I love to explore, adventure, see and do new things. Finding the time to do this is a whole separate story; albeit a darker, more curmudgeonous one… Alas, my girlfriend and I found a week surrounding Memorial day that allowed us to venture East and see some new places. I wanted to take my new Subaru for the trip; stretch her sea legs and put her to the test. Lexi also has family out there.

We headed out to Lotus, Ca first. My folks still live out there in a cabin that I grew up in, that my parents built with their own hands.

The following morning, we set our sites on Salt Lake City, Utah. Some parts of Nevada were really pretty, but the ten hour drive from Lotus to SLC seemed to take forever (well, ten hours)… I do have to say that Salt Lake City was one of the cleanest, well kept cities I have stayed in. We rented the Green Bikes, threw our half eaten pizzas in the front basket,  and toured through downtown in hopes of stumbling upon John Smith’s sacred castle, the Mormon Church… success.

Waking up in Salt Lake City was great; snow-capped mountains completely surrounding us. We headed out towards hwy 70, to cut through the Rockies and head to Colorado.

We hung out in Westminster with Lexi’s cousin’s family for the first couple days. of course we had to go to all of the awesome touristy spots, so we headed down to Colorado Springs area to see Garden of the Gods, then to Golden to check out Red Rocks Amphitheater. I had been to both of these places before but holy hell, still just as impressive!

There were also multiple times that I threatened Lexi I would stop at Cabelas. Fortunately for her, it never happened.

We ate a couple of awesome meals and saw a bunch of Crocs in Boulder, then parted ways to head to Lyons and Estes Park.

Of course we had to check out the Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for The Shining. Due to its connection with the movie and Jack crazy-ass Nicholson, Estes Park seemed haunted to me for the rest of our stay there. I liked it; creepy and secluded, and Jack Nicholson.

I would consider our second day at Estes Park to be the most successful. We spent a couple hours in the morning fishing for trout on Lake Estes (caught four or five). Then we made a hasty barge back towards Lyons, to meet up with the good folks at Backbone Adventures. I seriously can’t commend these people enough for providing such an awesome service to willing tourists.

We each rented the new Polaris ACE UTVs and after 3 hours of rocky, mud puddly, and snowy trails, we were wet and cold and SUPER PUMPED! It was so much fun, can’t get over it. Next up was Niwot for a nice cozy stay at the Niwot Inn; they have the coolest steam showers that will annihilate you in the best way possible.

The company I work for (Xilinx) has a beautiful campus in Longmont, so I set up a quick meeting with a co-worker who walked us through the building and campus. Amazing. I want to move out to work at that office!

It was sad to leave Colorado, but knowing that we were headed to Moab, Utah made it much more acceptable.

I was relieved to finally arrive in Moab. The scenery was breathtaking and unfathomable, and I was glad to get out of the car and try to forget the words to that stupid Iggy Azalea song… didn’t work.

We spent hours cruising through Arches National Park and getting out to hike around all of the spectacular arches, spires, balanced rocks, and sandstone monoliths. It felt like we were in another world.

Throughout the entire trip, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Western settlers and their long trips to new territories via covered wagon… How lucky are we that at any time there is a form of transportation that will get us to these amazing places in a fraction of the time. So yeah, I thought about that a lot, and how Giants, Dragons, and Mastodons could fit perfectly in some of these landscapes… I had been playing a lot of  Skyrim – Elder Scrolls.