Colorado

October, 2008
I had to go to a conference in Colorado last year and Teresa was able to go with me so we flew into Denver a couple of days early and spent the weekend driving all through the mountains. We had a blast. Teresa is great about just going for drives to take pictures so we took three long drives starting right after we landed on Friday.

The first thing we did was drive back out to the airport to see the Prairie Dogs we had spotted on the drive into town. After that we headed up into the mountains. It was October, so the Aspen trees were in full color. Wow! Yellow everywhere. I had been wanting to get picture of an Aspen tree stand for some time. They're typically so straight and tall and you will often find them in neat rows. They make a very cool picture. We headed south and drove the 22-mile paved and gravel road that climbs from Georgetown over scenic 11,669-foot Guanella Pass to Grant around the back of Mt Evans, Sawtooth and Mt Bierstadt.

Day 2 we got up early, grabbed some Starbucks and headed back up into the mountains. We headed north this time up towards the Rocky Mountain State Park near Boulder after a quick stop at the Buffalo Bill Cody grave site and small museum. I asked for discount since I'm a Cody, but they told me the $3 was already pretty cheap. I was just kidding anyway. The museum was actually pretty interesting and we learned a couple of things. There was some amazing scenery along this route and also lots of cars at all the pullouts.

Day 3 was the drive up Mt Evans to Summit Lake. You can actually drive almost to the top of the 14,264 ft mountain, but the last part of the road was closed so we had to stop at the parking lot by the lake. This was still 12,000 ft up which is way above the tree line. We saw a mountain goat, but not very close unfortunately. I would definitely recommend everyone spend a few days in Denver and use it as a jumping off point for some really beautiful drives through the Rocky Mountains.