Denver, Mt Evans & Boulder, Colorado – July 20th to 24th

We drove quite a way from Canyonlands National Park towards Denver, not realising just what kind of road we’d be on! It was very warm to start with, and I’m pretty sure our van felt that… Then we were on the spectacular freeway which winds through the Colorado Rocky Mountains, alongside the Colorado River and past ski fields such as Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, and many MANY others, right next to the freeway (ski villages and condos right next to the freeway). Anyway our car decided it couldn’t cope, and got altitude sickness, refusing to go any further until we gave it a break… So as it got dark along the freeway in the mountains, we sat and waited for about an hour in what was definitely bear territory, and saw a few deer right near us preparing to cross the freeway (thankfully they didn’t!)

One of the smaller ski fields alongside the freeway

So from that point on we’ve been a LOT more careful with the temperature of the car, as even though it didn’t look like it was getting too hot, the boiling point is lower at higher altitude, and we got up to over 11 000 feet (3.3km) on the freeway – I don’t think we’ve been below about 5200 feet (1 mile/1.6km) since! Fairly decent, considering the highest point in Australia, the top of Mt Kosciuszko, is less than 7500 feet!

We stayed at about 9000 feet in the little town of Central City to the west of Denver, and then headed to the meeting in Lakewood, in west Denver. After a wonderful meeting we were invited out to lunch with Jack and Loida and a couple of others from the meeting, including Rachel, one of the young friends who I’m pretty sure is my long lost twin in nature! We ate at a fantastic Italian restaurant and then chatted at Jack and Loida’s before heading to the afternoon mission, where we met SO many friends (there are over 25 meetings in Denver apparently, and 2 missions!) – in true Colorado form we were offered many places to stay the next few nights if we needed!

We stayed the Sunday night with Caitlyn (originally from Ohio) who’s visited our friends in Australia a few times before, and it was great to catch up! Again with the American hospitality, we were forced to sleep in the comfy bed she offered, and we were very well looked after (thanks again!!) – we would have loved to stay and catch up for longer, but as usual on our travels there just wasn’t really time, so we only had most of the day with Caitlyn before she headed off to work in the afternoon. So we headed to Castle Rock State Park south of the city and hiked a few miles – saw a couple of deer and vultures too!

Ahh luxury - thanks Caitlyn! :)

At Castle Rock State Park

View from Castle Rock

Vultures in Castle Rock State Park

After leaving Caitlyn we had a look into a couple of shops and bought Lawrie a new bike helmet (things like that are SO much cheaper over here!), before absolutely gorging ourselves on ‘lunch’ at about 4pm – first time to try bison, at a place with a bison head mounted on the wall (gigantic doesn’t really start to describe…). Then we headed to some fantastic games of volleyball with a few of the friends we’d met at the mission the day before (and some we hadn’t) – so a few hours of very quality volleyball was a great way to end the day! We headed from there to an awesome Mexican chain for dinner (supper?!), Chipotle, and got through about half of our meals, before heading to stay with Blake and Rachel for the night, which ended up being 2 nights… It was fantastic to spend time with a young couple our age who have LOTS of similarities to us!! So we had a great time! They have previously travelled to New Zealand and stayed with the Martins, so small world!! We definitely hope to see more of them!

It took a while to get going in the morning on Tuesday, but we eventually headed to Mt Evans, one of the Colorado ‘14ers’ (14 000 foot and over mountains, of which there are over 50 in the state! Just nearly twice the height of Mt Kosciuszko…) – we would have loved to hike up one of the easier 14ers, but that would have definitely required a little more sleep beforehand and leaving early, so we did the next best and drove to the top of Mt Evans, one of the 2 that don’t require hiking. The road up to Mt Evans is the highest paved road in North America, and we had to stop a couple of times to let the car cool down before continuing on. We saw lots of bighorn sheep on the way up (females with their young rather than males, so no massive horns), and then mountain goats at the top – these were awesome!! We also saw more yellow bellied marmots, which we’d previously seen at Yosemite NP, and heard the chirping sound of the Pika, a little mouse/rabbit type animal, but didn’t see any. At 14 264 feet, this was definitely the highest that either of us had been in our lives, but thankfully we both felt fine, just a little out of breath when walking the little bit from the car park to the very top! (They say it’s reasonably common for headaches, fatigue, dizziness, shortness of breath and nausea, so feeling more unfit than usual was pretty good really!)

Lake views when stopping for a break for the car on the way up Mt Evans,,.

There were thousands of these tiny blue dragonflies at the lake...

Looking back down at the lake from further up Mt Evans

Female bighorn sheep at Summit Lake on the road up Mt Evans

Mountain goats at the top of the road up Mt Evans - such funny looking things!

Us at the top...

Lawrie testing out the altitude by doing pushups on top of the car...?

After getting back to Blake and Rachel’s place in Golden, we headed to a nearby park to go riding – Blake and Lawrie on mountain biking trails and Rachel and I on the paved path – a nice way to finish off the day as the sun set, before heading home for a very late ‘supper’.

Biking with Blake & Rachel

Blake & Rachel & Mambo :)

Again, the next day we took a fair while to get going, but then checked out some of the outdoorsy shops in Golden, before heading on to Boulder, a little north. By then it was cloudy and raining, so we passed on going to see some of the things we’d planned, and I checked out some more shops while Lawrie slept in the car in the car park. Boulder and Denver would both be awesome places to live, they were great! If we were able to work in the US we’re pretty sure that Colorado would be our pick! A real summer (up to around 40ºC) as well as a real winter!