Slowing Down

After nearly 5 weeks on various vacations and over 4,000 miles in the car, we're finally winding down. After finishing up Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, we haven't been doing as much the last couple of days.

On Saturday, we drove to northern Colorado from western Wyoming. Jess did the drive across Wyoming and it was the first time we saw a speed limit of 80 (though with straight roads and no one around, I think Jess was hitting 95 occasionally. The drive was pretty unremarkable - there were some mountains but it was more of a desert with nothing out there. The only kind of neat thing was there were a lot of fences near the highway, most of which were slightly slanted. They didn't actually fence anything in - cows and horses could just walk around them if they wanted to. We figured there was a reason to them but since the internet hasn't reached that part of the country, we couldn't look it up on our phones until later. When we go to Colorado, I looked it up and found out they were snow fences that break up the wind as it blows snow. Obviously snow still passes through them but by changing the wind, the snow falls on the side of the road instead of on the highway. I guess when I-80 opened in Wyoming in the early 70's it was closed most of the winter because it was too dangerous with the blowing snow and they almost closed it permanently until some guy figured out the fences by using a model that old railroads used to use. I guess now it works so well it reduces the need to re-plow almost completely.

We got into Loveland, CO and there wasn't much there except for a Cracker Barrel, so that's about all we did. After getting up on Sunday, we drove to downtown Denver with the intent of going to zoo. Unfortunately, there was some kind of run going on so there was literally no parking anywhere near the zoo. We bagged that idea and went to our downtown hotel hoping to check in early and thankfully our room was ready.  Football and napping took up our afternoon until the Colorado Avalanche game in the evening.

The weather this trip has been near perfect and we kept saying how lucky we were. Of course, that was the jinx since as we walked the mile to the arena from our hotel, it began to sprinkle. Jess got concerned but I thought it was no big deal - after all, the forecast called for maybe some light passing showers and we only had to walk 10-15 minutes. Obviously, halfway through the walk it became a monsoon with pouring rain and 30-40 mph winds blowing right at us. We got to the cold arena completely drenched so that stunk. At least we had good seats (since it was preseason, we got 2nd row seats for relatively cheap) and the game was fun. It's sad that for a preseason game, their attendance will probably be better than a weekday game in December for the Canes.

Today we're taking it easy before doing a tour at the U.S. Mint in Denver and then meeting a friend for dinner. Tomorrow we fly back and by Friday afternoon we'll be back in NC and life will start to return to normal. Good thing I have two more weeks off once we get back home. As they say in Wyoming, "home is where the snow fence is." Note: no one says this.