Our Fabulously Full Weekend

So last weekend was an exciting and packed weekend. It started on Friday night with Chris and Steve (from Zach’s work) coming over, along with Steve’s wife Beth and their baby Nevada. We all hung out and watched the opening ceremony for the Olympic games in all their HD glory. That is, until a huge storm hit, affecting NBC’s local studio. They had to drop the HD for a large portion of the broadcast in the middle, and they occasionally lost picture and/or sound completely. It didn’t matter, though. We still had a blast.

Saturday started out with breakfast at Snooze (an incredible breakfast place across the street from our apartment) and then moved on to some kayaking at Union Chute. Zach did more rafting than I did. I spent half the time sunning on some rocks that were right by a rapid. If I placed myself on certain rocks, the shallow part of the rapid ran over my legs and arms. It wasn’t quite strong enough to pull me with force, but the current felt lovely on a hot morning.

Afterwards we took the light rail down to Littleton and went to my new favorite store…Savory Spice. Savory has every type of spice you could ever imagine. I got some good curry and some ginger and nutmeg. There’s a Savory closer to our apartment, but this one was fun to go to because Littleton is such a cute little town.

After dinner at a wings place, we went out to Lakeside. Lakeside is an amusement park that just celebrated its 100 year anniversary. It has retained most of its old rides and signage, and it is a fascinating place to visit. It’s only a few dollars to get in, and you have to pay for each ride. Zach and I went on their original roller coaster-an old wooden one with peeling paint and jerky turns. It was a little nerve-wracking, but it was still fun. We also hit up the bumper cars and the Ferris wheel. We were home in time to catch the re-airing of my favorite show, Psych. Ahh, the joys of Denver.

Sunday proved to be fairly eventful as well. We woke up with the intention of heading out to St. Mary’s Glacier. It’s located about 40 miles west of here, and it’s an honest-to-goodness real glacier that you can hike to. Unfortunately, we never made it. We followed the directions in my guide book, but ended up wandering around looking for the entrance to the trail. Eventually two other women came up, also looking for the trailhead. Interestingly enough, they were from Ohio and were huge Buckeye fans. one of them (Heather) informed us that there was a Buckeye bar located on Market Street (just 6 blocks from our apartment) that aired the games. The four of us wandered through woods for about an hour, repeatedly thinking we had found the trail, and repeatedly being disappointed. Finally, we returned to our cars and Heather waved down another car. We were informed that we should head up the road another half a mile. Upon following the driver’s directions we found that the trailhead was quite obvious once you passed a bend in the road. Furthermore, it was terribly crowded. We decided to head home and attempt trail another time, possibly on a weeknight.

Our whole weekend was full, which has become typical of our free time here. For once, there is too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. And that is a problem I am happy to have…