Roadtrip - Colorado Bound!

Well it sure has been a long time since I wrote a blog. Believe it or not, I think about writing often. While I was writing my research papers I often thought about how much I hated writing at those moments, yet how I would love to write a blog post. There is more freedom in a blog. It can be whatever I want it to be. I can write choppy sentences without getting yelled at for not varying my sentence structure or making my thoughts flow smoothly. They can be as choppy as I want. Or I can try shaping together some beautiful phrases. I can start a sentence with “but” or “and”. I can even use contractions (although chances are I will not because I am so used to writing without them). I do not have to think about APA or ieee citations, which I am incredibly thankful for. I can just be me.

There are a few things I have decided since the last time I wrote.

1.)    I hate writing scientifically

2.)    I do not want a career doing research

3.)    I love to salsa dance

4.)    I need to travel as much as I possibly can

5.)    I think mountains are incredible

Ok, there is much more than that, but those are the ones that stick out in my mind more than all of the rest.  My adventures in the past year have helped me reach these conclusions and I am excited to see what my current adventure will teach me.

As I type, I am sitting in my temporary home in Estes Park, Colorado. I will be living here until mid-April while I do my Exercise Physiology internship at MedX of Estes, which is an exercise and physical therapy clinic. I will have plenty of time to talk about my experiences at MedX in the months to come so I wanted to devote this post to reminisce about the road trip Katy, Meagan and I took out to Colorado. So here is a recap of the adventures:

I am jolted out of a deep sleep. My hand stumbles around to grab my phone so I can shut off my alarm and I find that it is 4:00am. Why am I waking up at 4:00? It takes a moment but when I realize what day it is my heart begins to race with both excitement and fear. January 2^nd: the day I leave the place I have lived my whole life and travel to a new territory. Today is the day that I move to Colorado. My bed is warm and I am not ready to get out yet, mostly because that means that I have to say more goodbyes. Instead I decide to check my Facebook, where I find an encouraging message from dear Madeline. Reading her kind words motivates me to take the first step of my journey.  Saying goodbye to my parents was hard after all that has been going on in the past year, but I sucked it up, made a special stop to say goodbye to my precious dog Amber, took a deep breath and drove away.

For the most part the drive out went smoothly. Katy almost forgot her wallet in her car which would have been a disaster since she needed an I.D to fly, but luckily we noticed before we got too far. It may have even been a good thing because the time delay made us miss rush hour in the twin cities.

Do I even need to mention that the drive was long and boring? I mean, come on, we were driving through Iowa and Nebraska. We played some driving games to pass the time. I made up a game where you have to count how many towns you drive through that have a name that could be a person’s first name, such as Alexander, Maxwell, etc. We found 32 total but that is counting a few names that were kind of a stretch, such as Columbus and Eustus, but hey, it got me through the trek. Now let’s fast forward through the driving part.

We downloaded the Travelocity app (which is incredibly useful for road trips in case anyone was wondering) and we used it to check into our first hotel in Sterling, CO. However, when we arrived the hotel was pretty sketchy… and by sketchy imagine peeling turquoise paint everywhere and the entrance door to the lobby being chained shut with no one there. Talk about a surge of panic! Luckily we found a sign that directed us to a Super 8 across the street, where they explained that my card wouldn’t be charged for the other hotel and finally got some rest after 17 hours of driving.

We got up early the next morning so that we would make it to Estes Park at a decent time. Seeing the rising sun gave me a surge of energy and I could not wait to get back on the road so we could see the mountains. The drive to Estes Park was awesome. We traveled up a beautiful road with a countless amount of switchbacks, ascending 2,000+ feet. Driving around every bend was like a new surprise because the rocks of the Rockies were so tall that you could never see around them, and as we rounded a corner we would find a new breath-taking view. I seriously wanted to take a picture every 5 seconds but that would have just been impractical.

The view that was the most memorable was my first glance of Estes Park. We drove over a hill and then BOOM! There is was. One of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. You could see the town completely surrounded by mountains. We drove over a bridge that crossed Lakes Estes, which still had open water and was as smooth as glass. All I could think of was “Am I dreaming? Am I really going to live here for the next 4 months?” And the answer is yes. Why yes I am.

We picked up my key from MedX of Estes and the owner of the gym and of the house I am currently living in drove us to the house. He showed us around the house (which is old, but awesome, and has incredible views of the mountains)

He even drew us a map of the back roads that he suggested that we take to find the most scenic drive possible. We carried my loads and loads of stuff into my room, threw it everywhere and then adventured into the Rocky Mountain National Park. Did I mention that the opening to the Park is only 10 minutes away from my house? I mean, honestly, can my life get any more magical? The views are literally indescribable so I am not even going to attempt to put words to how great the views were. They were the kind that cameras cannot capture. We drove up and up and up until we reached the Bear Lake trailhead and then we hiked. And took cliché pictures of us jumping with the mountains in the background, because that is what the moment called for of course.







We also made a quick stop at the Stanley Hotel, which is famous because that is where Stephen King was inspired to write the book The Shining. It is a cool looking building!



That night we relaxed in my house since we were so beat from our journeys and our hike at altitude. We sat in matching white chairs and read.

Again, we woke up early because we needed to pack in as much adventure as possible. Our first stop was a local coffee shop called Kind Coffee, which is organic, fair trade and awesome. It was one of those perfect coffee shop moments: warm drinks, great views, best friends. Then we attempted to walk the main street to see the cute little shops but we were there so early that not much had opened yet. We also attempted to go to a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory while we were in the Rocky Mountains but it was closed. I later found out that the reason it was closed was because a black bear broke in and ate a ton of chocolate, without breaking a thing. I can even prove it! Check out the surveillance camera from when the bear did it, it’s pretty neat:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i788ETZPQPE

That day we drove to Vail and we took the back roads like my boss suggested. WOW!!! That is all I can even say.



It was so nice driving through the mountains listening to and singing along with worship music. It just felt so powerful with traces of God’s beautiful creation in every direction. I will never forget that drive. We also drove over the Loveland Pass, which is a road with CRAZY switchbacks that goes above the tree line at 12,000 feet in elevation.



 

We passed many ski resorts and the people on the slopes literally looked like ants, which made us laugh out loud. When we got to Vail, we were not impressed with the view however. The I25 interstate goes right through the town and the mountains there are full of ugly dead trees. The resorts were pretty phenomenal (Rooms go for $2,500 a night) and the houses were worth around 12 million dollars. It was cool to see for a few minutes but there was absolutely nothing affordable to do. So we plopped back into my car and drove to Eagle, where we stayed the night. Again, there wasn’t much to do but we ate lunch and dinner there and then relaxed in our hotel room. Man, is traveling exhausting! It was here I saw my very first episode of Duck Dynasty and it was entertaining listening to Katy laugh at the ridiculousness as I wrote postcards. Although we did nothing extremely exciting at our destination, the drive through the mountains was the point of the trip so we were in no way disappointed.

The next morning we got up early and began our journey to Hot Sulphur Springs. And what a journey it was! Unfortunately we forgot to check how much gas we had in my car before we left Eagle. I guess I did not think much of it because I assumed we would have plenty of places to go along the way. Little did we know, the road the WHOLE way from Eagle to Hot Sulphur Springs was extremely desolate. Imagine what it would be like to have mountains and desert at the same time and that’s where we were.





 There were essentially no houses for miles and miles. As we drove around the curvy roads through the mountains, the temperature started to drop lower and lower until it was -26.



 Oh and to top it all off we had absolutely no cell phone service so if we were to run out of gas we would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. We used Meagan’s GPS to find the nearest gas station, which luckily wasn’t too far away. So we pull up to it and it seriously looks like one of those sketchy places in the horror films. My mind wandered to the movie Wrong Turn with the creepy deformed cannibal people (this is why I have not watched horror films in the last 6 years) and that was all I could think of as I walked to the pump. Then I noticed that the handles of the pumps all had bags over it, which weirded me out even more. So I walked to the door of the tiny store and saw a sign that read “Closed due to a death in the family”. Great. Now where are we going to go? The GPS said the next gas station was 20 something miles away, which would be nothing in Minnesota where roads are essentially flat, but when you are driving up a mountain you do not get very good gas mileage and I was pretty panicked. I prayed and prayed that we would make it to the gas station (and that this one would actually have gas to sell me!) and we continued on our way. After a few miles we came across the slowest driving semi in the whole wide world and never have I been so thankful to see a semi!



It was such a relief to see another person on the road because I knew that if we ran out of gas or drove off a cliff or something at least someone would come to our rescue. I happily drove 25-35mph the remainder of the way and made jokes about how if we did break down we could snuggle in the hay that the semi was carrying to stay warm. I am happy to announce that the gas station did in fact have gas and I have never been more thankful.





We ate at a local café, where the three of us sat on the same side of the table (and we got some funny looks from the waitress) and enjoyed a stress-free meal.

Our next stop was Hot Sulphur Springs, where we found the spa that had natural hot springs. The spa had 21 mineral pools that were completely natural and not treated by any additional chemicals. The water temperatures varied from 104-126 degrees Fahrenheit. And on a day that was -26 the water felt sooooooo good! It took a little getting used to the natural water because there would be little (or sometimes fairly big) mysterious particles floating around in the water but you learned to ignore it and just enjoy the warmth. It also smelled pretty darn funny, kinda like eggs, but you learned to ignore that too.





It was a lot of fun actually. And it was really entertaining watching Katy’s ring change a different color in each pool. Our favorite pool (that had natural waterfalls!) turned her ring a bright blue, so she made sure to dunk her hand in that pool before we left so the ring would at least be her favorite color. It was also weird because the water was so warm, but our hair would freeze into practically icicles since the air was so cold. I tried to snap parts of my hair off to see if that was actually possible but it didn’t work. Of course Katy had to explain the Chemistry behind it and that it was probably possible in colder temperatures but I decided -26 is cold enough for me and I am not willing to try it any other way.

After lounging in the pools for a few hours we made our last adventure across Colorado to Denver, so we would be closer to the airport for the following morning. We used the Travelocity app to avoid the bedbug infested hotels and we found an affordable Sheraton right on the 16^th street mall. We spent the first few minutes admiring how nice the hotel was by exploring it and being somewhat obnoxious with our excitement.





We had a great view of the city from our window!



The location was incredibly convenient because we were able to walk to all the cool shops right from our hotel. We spent the evening strolling down the strip of stores, exploring, and looking for a cheap place to eat.



We passed many homeless people on the sidewalks, which broke Katy’s heart and brought her to tears (what an amazing soul that woman has) and when we finally found a Pizza Hut to eat at, we bought extra food to give away to someone in need. God humbled us all and showed us how incredibly blessed we are to have a roof over our heads, blankets to wrap up in and enough food for three meals a day. How can I complain about stupid things when I am abundantly blessed? I will never forget that night, seeing the homeless man hug Katy, thankful for a warm meal or the man huddled in the corner who got to eat my breadsticks.

The next morning we got up early and had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate at the Corner Bakery across from our hotel. I was thoroughly entertained by how much the man sitting next to us reminded me of a gangster, Al Capone style. For real. He had the suit, hat, and accent too. After breakfast we walked down to the capital building just to admire the view of the mountains from the top of the staircase. Then we checked out and headed to the Denver Science Museum where we spent our final hours together exploring rock and animal exhibits.







We even found a health exhibit that was all about anatomy and physiology which obviously got me all excited like the nerd I am at heart.

Dropping Katy and Meagan off at the airport was hard, because I knew that I wouldn’t get to see them for a long time. Meagan was to return to the married life and Katy was about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime to Ireland for a semester. We needed to go our own ways, but it is scary saying goodbye to the only people in the state who know you because you suddenly feel very alone. I cried of course, but I told myself to be brave as I drove away from my two best friends. Instead, I embraced the opportunity that was in front of me and returned to Estes Park, which I can now call my temporary home.

Well that wraps up my tales of our grand road-tripping adventure. I have had many adventures since but those deserve their own blog posts. I promise, they will come sooner than this one did (especially since I have been writing this in parts for 2 months, haha) Keep it real readers!

With peace and love,

Stephanie