Rocky Mountain Hi

Happy 4th!

2007-07-08T21:54:00.000-06:00

A little bit late, but here's our report from the last week:

I got the day off on Wednesday for the 4th in the middle of a quiet week at work as many people were out on vacations. Fort Collins had some downtown live music and some art stands, similar to the Taste of Fort Collins event (although much smaller), so we walked around there for a little while, and then came home for some typical July 4th cuisine (hot dogs, watermelons, and chocolate chip cookies) before the fireworks.

The Fort Collins fireworks were at the City Park, which is just a few minutes walk from our apartment. We met up with Matt, one of the other AMD interns, who is another recent Michigan graduate, and sat out on a blanket at the foot of City Park Lake in time for a performance by the Fort Collins Symphony, who treated us (and thousands of others!) to the usual 4th songs, including "Stars and Stripes Forever", the "1812 Overture", and "America the Beautiful", before the fireworks began. They even continued their final song "Liberty", which included some spoken sections of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and some famous U.S. speeches about halfway into the fireworks, which was neat. After a great fireworks grand finale that actually lit up the sky, it was just a short walk back home.

On Thursday, we headed back down to Boulder to see my friend Kevin from California and his girlfriend Kate (both recent Notre Dame grads). Kate lives near Denver, so Kevin was in town for a week and we were able to meet up and catch up over a nice Italian dinner at Pasta Jay's on Pearl Street in Boulder. We also checked out some shops and stopped for dessert at Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Kevin and Kate: Thanks for meeting up with us! That was a great time!

Here's Whitney at the Haagen Dazs (she's a handful sometimes, I tell you!):

Also, some neat origami from one of the Boulder art boutiques:

Over the weekend, we saw Ratatouille, the new Pixar movie, which we enjoyed. We've also played some tennis at the City Park since getting some cheap rackets at Target. Whitney (former high school tennis player) has been teaching me (took 3 lessons at the YMCA in 6th grade) as we go, so it's interesting, but certainly a fun thing to do to get out of the hot apartment at times. Luckily, it's supposed to cool down this week to the regular summer average of 85 (from the 95 degree weather we've been having lately).

Only five weeks left in Colorado, but still many things left to do and see!

(Humorous anecdote: As we were walking home from the Walrus Ice Cream shop in Old Town tonight, I saw many bikes outside the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant and noted: "Wow, look how many people boke in for dinner tonight!" Good thing I'm an engineer and learned my English well!)

Yee-haw! Rodeo Time!

2007-07-04T11:35:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday we went out to the Greeley Stampede to see a rodeo! Whitney was not too enthused about seeing a rodeo, but she's now glad we went!

Greeley is named after Horace Greeley, the 1800s newspaper editor who advised "Go west, young man". It's the next town east of Fort Collins, about 30 minutes away. We drove out there with two other summer interns from AMD, arriving a few events into the rodeo. The arena was outdoors, but had a cover over the horseshoe-shaped grandstand, keeping us out of the sun and cool on a near-100 degree day.

We missed various types of bronco riding, but still got to see some great events. We saw a few of the calf-roping cowboys, and then it was time for the rodeo clown's intermission special. A clown drove out into the arena with a "police officer" with him, claiming they were looking for an escaped convict dressed as an American Indian. Because they were chasing an Indian, the clown claimed he was a "cowboy". After driving around for a few minutes, their car broke down and a "construction worker" walked out onto the arena floor. Suddenly, an "Indian" jumped out of the trunk of the car, all four characters lined up, and the first strains of YMCA boomed out of the speakers. The entire crowd, including me, groaned that they didn't see the Village People reference coming, before standing up to join the Y-M-C-A-ing!

The second half of the rodeo led off with team roping, where one cowboy lassos a steer around the neck, and his teammate lassos the steers back feet, all in about 5 seconds. Pretty impressive skills.

The next event was my favorite: "Mutton busting" This event was the kids' event. 10 6-7 year old boys and girls, equipped in hockey helmets and flak jackets, took turns climbing onto the back of an upset sheep, who then ran the kid around the arena. If they could stay on for 6 seconds, they received a score. Only 2 or 3 of the kids stayed on for the required time, but they all had a great time. Here's a picture of the eventual winner:

(Click the pictures for a larger view)

After the mutton busting, the rodeo continued with the women's event of barrel racing, where horseriders navigate their horses around 3 large barrels before racing back to the start:

The rodeo wrapped up, as most rodeos do, with some bull riding. Always a fun event to watch, since there's nothing like an angry bull to create some action. Only about 4 of the riders stayed on for the full 8 seconds, but it was still fun to watch.

As a bonus event, they rolled out some very large ramps, and 3 dirt bike riders took turns soaring above the arena, climbing over their handlebars, spinning the bike sideways and back, and completing a backflip, all while 50 feet above the arena floor. Neat way to wrap up the rodeo!

Did Whitney have fun? Looks like it (especially after a super-large rodeo lemonade!)

Trolley

2007-07-01T13:27:00.000-06:00

Hey all -- it's been awhile, but I just thought I'd throw up some pictures from last weekend. Saturday we went to Broomfield, CO for a trip to the bank (closest location for me) and later ended up at their shopping mall, Flatiron Crossing. As I told my sister, I thought it was funny that one of the anchor stores was a sporting goods store (Welcome to Colorado!) but overall it was a nice mall. We ate dinner at CPK, which I was nostalgic for because I used to go a lot with my mom.

Sunday was an important local tradition, the Colorado Brewers' Festival. Held in Downtown Fort Collins, this was its 18th year running. My parents will probably scold me for writing about beer again ("not another beer story!") but it's weird because beer really IS just a bigger part of life here. There are a TON of local breweries (many represented at the festival in their line-up of 32 companies), and I swear, there's beer at every event. Taste of Fort Collins? Beer tent. Tasting of restaurants at a local mall? Beer garden. 4th of July? TWO downtown beer gardens. It's kind of crazy, actually!

The festival is known for its long lines, but we went later on Sunday so it wasn't too bad. It was about a 100 degrees out, and I can't say I completely enjoyed myself, but I guess it was interesting to see. I wouldn't need to go back if I were here next year.

What I actually really liked about the day was getting there -- we took the Fort Collins trolley! This old restored trolley car runs from City Park (right next to our house) to downtown on weekends and holidays. Usually we bike to downtown, but we've wanted to check out the trolley and since it was so hot it gave us the perfect chance. It was actually really fun to ride. I couldn't believe what a nice breeze there was! Much better than you would expect for driving so slowly -- I don't know how they do it. Here are pictures of us on the trolley before it left:

The car cost $6000 when it was purchased in 1919. It was one of 4 bought by the city. At one time Fort Collins was the smallest city in the country to have a trolley, and they charged the lowest fare too (5 cents). A funny story is that the 4 cars, which weigh 8 tons each, were LOST during shipping. They showed up a few months later, and no one ever knew where they had been during that time!

I think it's great that the city put in the effort to have this historical ride. To wrap up, here are pictures of us at the park with the trolley:

This weekend so far, I've been to my first rodeo! We'll put up stories and pictures from that eventually!

Craigslist!

2007-06-22T21:28:00.000-06:00

Found a nice deal on Craigslist today.

We grabbed two sets of old golf clubs (21 clubs in all) for $15 total. Might have to make a few trips to the city's 9 hole golf course and driving range that is about 100 yards from our place.

Out and about for a fun weekend in Fort Collins!

Typical Night At Our House

2007-06-21T19:20:00.000-06:00

Want an up-to-the-minute update on what we're doing right now?!

Check out this picture for an example. (You can also see a bit of our living room, M flag proudly flying)

Photo credit: Karri

Wednesday News Round-Up

2007-06-20T11:26:00.001-06:00

I love Target.

The Economist's take on Barack Obama. What do you think?

How does your state (or county) compare for gas? We're at about a light orange, which is pretty accurate.

Trying to be more eco-friendly? Check out this new site.

Looking for love?

Boulder

2007-06-19T21:46:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday we went to Boulder. We were really impressed by how nice the city was. They have a downtown mall thing, kind of like Denver, only a lot better. It's called Pearl Street. Many unique stores, and no cars, bikes, pets, or "aggressive" panhandling allowed. There were lots of street performers though -- some really good live music every 50 feet or so the whole way! We saw bands, a banjo, a cello, a guitar, a long windpipe thing -- you name it, it was there.

We had burgers for dinner at a sports bar (delicious) after walking around awhile. Then we walked some more and rounded out the night at Cheesecake Factory for dessert (even better). The highlight was definitely the Boulder Bookstore. A local bookstore, it was like something I might have dreamed up. Three stories of books -- the top level being an old ballroom -- and atmosphere to spare. I took a picture or two, but really, you just have to BE there. It was amazing.

Every place should have a Pearl Street. It's one of the best of its kind that I've seen. And lots of people there -- children, families, couples, etc, of all ages.

1. The biggest Jelly Bean machine I've ever seen, in the bookstore. Was this store made for me, or what?

2. 3rd floor ballroom of the bookstore. See that little girl reading? That would have been me as a kid.

3. Cheesecake! I got White Chocolate Caramel Latte -- like Starbucks, but in cheesecake form. Mmmmmm. Simon got Chocolate Raspberry. Also good.

4. Leapfrog!

3-for-1

2007-06-19T20:03:00.000-06:00

They say good things come in threes, and our recent activities are no exception! Without further ado, here are three cool things we did in the two weeks between the weekend Andy and Karri came and last weekend.

1. Rockies Game

Tuesday the 5th we went into Denver for a baseball game with people from Simon's work (mostly interns, a few full-timers). Andy had stopped back into town for an extra night, so he came too. You might remember us talking about the row of purple seats in the stadium that marks a mile high, and you can see them in the picture. (zoom in for a better look)

The game wasn't too exciting except for the part where there was some fighting, causing everyone from both teams to jump off the bench and run onto the field. The boys tell me this doesn't happen every day. Naturally, they thought it was sweet.

2. Texas Roadhouse Dinner

We went to eat at Texas Roadhouse because they were having a specials night featuring New Belgium. They had games to win prizes, and (given their documented focus on bikes) one was racing tiny bikes on a "course" around the restaurant. Yeah, fun times. Simon won a t-shirt, and it was funny to watch. The waiter was really good!

3. Taste of Fort Collins/Old Town Car Show

Saturday, June 9th was the annual Taste of Fort Collins festival, featuring food and live music. It was actually kind of like Ann Arbor's art fair because there were artists and local businesses set up too. The food area had lots of restaurants represented, but all the food cost extra. Instead, we mostly filled up on the three rounds of free appetizers at the Whole Foods tent, along with mini samples of Starbucks (see pic!). The music headliner for the night was Sister Hazel of "All For You" fame, so we got to hear them play for about an hour before biking back home.

In the middle of the afternoon we took a break to go to the other event happening downtown -- the Old Town Classic Car Show. There were some awesome cars on display. I'm going to put up a bunch of them since they looked so cool. The first place winner was the bright orange car -- a 1956 Chevy Del Ray (yes I had to look that up). It WAS a beauty!

Last weekend was Boulder, and I'll have a post up about that soon -- it's already half done!

Rocky Mountain National Park!

2007-06-17T17:44:00.000-06:00

Finally wrapping up Andy and Karri's trip to see us, we drove out to Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday the 3rd. The park is about an hour and a half from us, on a beautiful drive through the Big Thompson River Canyon. Unfortunately, as we drove into the canyon, the clouds turned black and we even had a bit of hail fall. But the sky looked blue ahead, so we continued on....and it was worth it!

Here we are just outside the park!

Andy and Karri planned to stay and camp for a few nights, so we stopped at the Visitor's Center for some useful information, and then headed up Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest continuously paved road in the U.S. ! The highest point is over 12,200 feet elevation. Along the way we stopped for a picnic lunch and at several turnoffs to get some amazing pictures!

This was a shot from the side of the road about 5 minutes into the park. You don't have to travel far in the park to see some great sights.

After stopping for lunch, there was a great turnoff in a switchback part of the road that let you see mountains in a 270 degree view. The tallest peak in this picture (partially obscured in the clouds) is Longs Peak, which is the tallest peak in the park and can be seen from Fort Collins.

The next stop had one of the best rainbows we've ever seen! As we pulled into the parking spot, we saw 30+ people pointing and taking pictures of something, and when we got out the car, we knew why...there was a huge rainbow "growing" across the valley. As the clouds moved through, the rainbow started just at the left side of this picture, and grew towards the right until it crossed as much of the valley as we could see. What a sight.

From this point, it was up, up, up into the tundra. You might say we were a bit high up at this point, after looking at the next picture.

There's another visitor's center and giftshop just after the highest point on the road (and we could feel the thin air as we stopped to shop for a minute). We didn't see a sign on the road indicating the actual highest point, but we found this sign.

On the way back from the Alpine Visitor's Center, we stopped for short hike on the Ute Trail.

With views of mountains, the blue sky, and even some elk, it was a very neat experience walking around at close to 12,000 feet. On the way back, I scampered up some rocks for a better view:

Whitney's at the bottom of the rocks on the right, and Andy and Karri are back on the trail somewhere in the middle of the picture.

After the hike, the black clouds rolled back in and we were glad to be off the trail, and headed back down below the tree line. As we were just about to leave the park, we found a few elk enjoying the park as well.

Whitney and I bid goodbye and headed back to Fort Collins while Andy and Karri enjoyed the park for two more days. What a fun weekend!

Next time we'll mention a couple fun things we've up to the past few weeks and get caught up to today!

A-B Facts

2007-06-14T19:46:00.000-06:00

Alright readers, you may have been asking yourself, "Where's Whitney been?" (or not) . . . But in the answer to that question lies some exciting news! Namely, I have been fortunate to work several temp JOBS the last few days. (Friday and Mon-Wed) So that was fun, from a financial standpoint, but I had today off and now I'm back in action on the blog.

Simon did a great summary of the Budweiser Tour, but I'm just going to throw in a few details I found interesting.

First of all, Anheuser-Busch has 12 breweries in the U.S., but only 5 of them do tours so this was actually a pretty unique thing to see. And the famous Clydesdales are only in three locations: Missouri, New Hampshire, and here. Go Fort Collins!

Anheuser-Busch is famous for their Budweiser brand, but they actually manufacture a ton of other products too. They had a neat display case showing every kind of drink they make:

Additionally, you might guess that the company owns Busch Gardens, but they also own SeaWorld and -- someplace I went when I was young -- Sesame Place! I remember how we stumbled upon this small themepark somewhere in Pennsylvania while on a family trip, so I was certainly surprised to the kiddie park advertised here!

That wraps up fun facts about the Anheuser-Busch Corporation; now on to the beer. The company has a 50% market share. That's right -- that means that one out of every two beers sold in the U.S. is an Anheuser-Busch product. Wow. They manufacture 125 million barrels of beer annually, of which 9 million are made right in Fort Collins. (1 barrel = 2 kegs)

The process for making Budweiser beer uses 5 key ingredients: barley, hops, rice, water, and yeast. They say the rice is unique and is what gives Budweiser its light, crisp finish. The other unique part of their brewing process, shown below, is the beechwood aging process. When the beer is fermented with yeast, adding the alcohol content, it's technically done -- but Budweiser calls this "alpha beer." It goes through another whole aging process that takes about 2 weeks, or about half the total time required to manufacture a batch of Budweiser (30 days). The addition of beechwood chips is supposed to allow the yeast more surface area and let the beer ferment better without affecting flavor.

Now a word on cans: as can be noted on the sign in this picture, the company is the "world's largest aluminum recycler" and recycles enough every year to make all their cans. Guess how many cans are in this block? . . . . . . 800! And here's the process by which the metal becomes a can, which I thought was kind of a neat display.

The very last step is putting the top on the can. Simon showed you the can filler, and here you can see the tops going into the machine on the right. They come in those big paper rolls to the left, and a worker was continually unwrapping and loading those. The filler goes really fast.

The last thing we did was see the Clydesdales in their barn -- there were about 6 of them, but it was hard to get a good picture because the lighting was poor. Here's one. The original Clydesdale-led beer wagon was a gift from August Busch, Jr. to his father in 1933 to celebrate the end of Prohibition.

And for you animal lovers, don't worry -- the horses had a gorgeous pasture outside with plenty of room to stretch, and Clydesdale Camera Day is only once a month for 2 hours, so we were very lucky it happened to be while our friends were in town!

Finally, I leave you with the boys enjoying their free samples and Karri with her soda. A great day!

Friends and Fun!

2007-06-07T20:58:00.000-06:00

Last weekend Andy and Karri, our respective roommates from Michigan and fellow MMBers, came to town. Andy is finishing up a 10,000+ mile sightseeing drive around the country before he starts a job in the real world and Karri just took the MCAT, so it was a good time for a vacation!

We met them for lunch on Friday at Old Chicago restaurant near my work and then Whitney showed them around Fort Collins until work was over. We grilled up some burgers and played some euchre and saw Andy's pictures from his travels.

Saturday's highlight was a trip to the Anheuser-Busch brewery. It was Clydesdale Day, so we got our picture taken with one!

After a quick game of horseshoes on the lawn, it was tour time. We were taken through the facility in a guided group tour and got to see all parts of the beer-making process, from the mash cookers and brewkettles to the enormous Fermentating Cellars.

My favorite part, however, was the production room, with the can filler. The large circle in the picture below was full of cans zipping around, being filled, and topped. Each can was filled and topped automatically in under 5 seconds before being routed down the assembly line to enter the pasturizer.

At the time of the tour, the Fort Collins brewery had produced over 1 billion cans worth of beer so far this year, accounting for 1/16th of Anheuser-Busch's production. After seeing the Clydesdales again, enjoying some free samples, and playing some more lawn games, we headed back to get ready for what was a delicious dinner at Enzio's Italian Restaurant in Old Town, and more ice cream at the local favorite: Walrus.

Come back soon to read about our adventure to the great outdoors of Rocky Mountain National Park!

Denver

2007-06-02T18:03:00.000-06:00

For those of you following along, last Saturday we checked out Denver for the first time. This started with a trip to the upscale Cherry Creek Shopping Center where the anchors are Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Saks, and Nordstrom. Yes!!

Driving around downtown, we passed the capitol building. It has a distinctive shiny gold dome, and a marker on the steps denotes the exact height of 5,280 ft. above sea level for the Mile High City. (Also, a purple row of seats in the baseball stadium marks the same thing.)

The dome, shown below (pic from Wikipedia), was originally copper but since that oxidizes to a green patina I guess Coloradoans wanted something that would stay shiny! It's quite pretty in person. I'm sure we will go back another time to do a tour of the Capitol and the nearby Denver U.S. Mint.

We drove by City Park and the Denver Zoo, other popular attractions, before ending up at the 16th Street Mall. This pedestrian mall stretches about a mile in the middle of Downtown Denver, filled with shops and restaurants. There is a free trolley that runs up and down it regularly too. It was really a nice area. We walked around for awhile looking for some dinner before settling on a small corner Italian restaurant.

At one point we ducked inside a shopping center and ended up passing the ESPN Zone restaurant. Outside, they have a tiled wall mural depicting players from each of Denver's four major sports teams. Here's Simon! (I tried to get him to pose like the basketball player, but he didn't want to :)

I'm looking forward to going back to Denver another weekend!

We rounded out the weekend by having a barbeque Monday night in honor of Memorial Day -- burgers, peaches, corn on the grill, and potato chips, with brownies for dessert! Also last weekend we acquired two bicycles at garage sales, so we went for a ride Monday. Fort Collins is great for biking, with many designated bike lanes and generally an impressive number of people using this form of transportation.

More soon on what we've been up to the past few days to finally get this blog current. We had a great time this weekend visiting with our friends and (respective) former roommates Andy and Karri!

Last Weekend

2007-06-02T17:12:00.001-06:00

As usual we're a little behind, but last weekend was Memorial Day so we had 3 days to relax and see some new sights!

Friday night started with dinner at Austin's American Grill downtown. They had a full week of special events to kick off the summer, and our night featured live music and blended drink specials. (Mmm pina colada!) Simon had Fat Tire, the famous beer of the local New Belgium Brewing Company.

The beer is so-called in honor of the founder's bicycle trip across Europe, where he became entranced by Belgium beer in the first place while at a bar in Brugge, Belgium. To this day, the company gives employees one of their signature "cruiser" bikes after one year of work, and a trip to Belgium after five!

An interesting point is that Fat Tire is actually served in a Belgian-style beer glass, which I recognized from my trip to Belgium last summer with my family! I was excited to make that connection. Here's a picture of Simon with his beer and one of me from last summer, straight from Belgium, for comparison:

Even though I've used this to educate you on one of the (many) local breweries, we did eat as well -- I had the house specialty Smoked Pork Tenderloin which had an amazing sweet soy/brown sugar sauce and was WELL worth the money, and Simon had a combo chicken/ribs plate that he liked.

Coming up next is a trip to Denver on Saturday!

Issuing a Challenge

2007-05-30T18:39:00.001-06:00

The first person... to find me a job... gets $50!!!!

Readyyyyyy.....GO!!

(You know you want to.)

Random State Facts

2007-05-29T23:34:00.001-06:00

Wyoming: Weird license plates! The vertical number on the left stands for the county, numbered 1-23. Then I presume they start at 1 for the license plate number. I saw no cars having over four numbers. :)

Also: the huge expanses of open grassland means you see lots of animals grazing. Cows, horses, often deer too. So, we saw plenty of white cows, brown cows, and black cows, but no spotted cows. Where are the spotted cows??

(Yes, the map is reflected in the picture)

Minnesota:
Check out these windmills! We saw multiple instances across the farmland in the south part of the state. I'm impressed with the energy-consciousness.

South Dakota: I wanted to point out that while Simon identified this state as "mostly a prairie landscape" that was just the westernmost part, not the first 3 hours which he slept through. :)

That part was lush, green, and pleasant, as shown. Some small hills to keep you guessing -- not too flat. Also, the Missouri River appears suddenly, at the crest of a hill, after miles and miles of the same scene. It was wonderful! Absolutely gorgeous, and I wish I had a good picture.

Mount Rushmore

2007-05-29T22:48:00.000-06:00

Just a few more comments on things I found interesting. (Click on pictures to enlarge!)

After viewing the sculptor's original vision, you can actually see where workers started details like Washington's coat and a little bit of Lincoln's collar before time and money ran out. Funny thing is, you see the faces so many times you don't even notice. After learning that, those details popped out for me! Look again:

Also, they originally started Jefferson to the left of Washington and blasted off his partially-finished face when it wasn't turning out right. You can't tell at all.

Fully 90% of the carving was done with dynamite blasts. No workers ever died in the project.

Workers used huge plaster casts to help guide them. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see one lowered next to a face in progress.

The sculptor used a "pointing system" -- like a HUGE protractor -- to keep things in line.

Finally, although you only ever see the faces, Mount Rushmore actually has a very nice monument surrounding it. Here's the main entrance:

And as you go closer, there is a neat ceremonial walk. Pillars display every state flag (peeking out in the picture). The states are carved on the pillars in alphabetical order, one on each side of each pillar. The date the state joined the Union is listed, and the flag is hung above.

There's also a half-mile trail looping around the monument with more great picture opportunities. A nice short walk for us through some of the natural beauty of South Dakota.

P.S. TR actually wears glasses! Check out this awesome close-up pic from Simon:

Venturing West, Part 4

2007-05-29T21:24:00.000-06:00

After a great weekend in Minnesota (see below), it was time for the final leg of the trip.

Here we are heading out on Wednesday morning:

Whitney wants to add that although I looked "bright and chipper," she clearly needed some coffee.

We hopped on I-35 South for an hour, through the farms of southern Minnesota, until we reached I-90, where we spent the remainder of the day. After lunch and a few more hours of Minnesota, we reached the "Great Faces, Great Places" sign of South Dakota around 3pm.

South Dakota is mostly a prairie landscape as seen above, dotted with hundreds of signs for the Corn Palace and Wall Drug. We were able to fend off the urge of these tourist traps, and made it into Rapid City for the night at 8pm. Spurning the national food chains, we picked the Millstone Family Restaurant for dinner. Great choice! Nothing like Midwest diner-style dinner.

With a night of rest, we took off for Mount Rushmore in the morning. Driving out of Rapid City, we quickly rose into the Black Hills.

The approach to Mount Rushmore:

And there it is! Quite a sight to see in person

Here we are with George, Thomas, Theodore, and Abraham

After a few hours at the park, including seeing the sculptor's original, unfinished plans for the monument we continued on to Wyoming.

Wyoming was pretty plain, about how Wyoming sounds, although we saw many of these, without knowing what they were. Have a guess? Click on the picture and scroll down to see if you're right.

After stopping for gas in Chugwater, Wyoming (pop: 244), we drove past the "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" sign (see our title header) at 6:36pm, and arrived in Fort Collins about 30 minutes later.

Now that we've had a chance to settle in and explore the town, we'll pass along new stories and pictures soon!

Venturing West, Part 3

2007-05-29T13:32:00.001-06:00

Our last post left off in Minnesota on Saturday, and the next day was Mother's Day. We ate lunch with my parents at an Asian place and spent a few hours walking around Northeast Minneapolis poking in some stores and restaurants. Simon and I were impressed by an upscale grocery store (with carpet!) and tried a bunch of free cheese samples there. Mmm. The four of us also checked out some really cool downtown condos above the store for fun. The furnished models had a clean, bold modern look and huge glass windows displaying great views of the city. Really neat to see.

In the evening we attended a surprise dinner for Emily's boyfriend's graduation at the Three Fish restaurant in Minneapolis. Ben was certainly surprised to see all of us there, along with his parents and friends! Here's a picture of Emily and Ben, and one of me and Simon:

Following a great dinner we all enjoyed Emily's homemade desserts of cake and cookie cake.

The next day was Emily's 19th birthday! We had plans for dinner at night, but Simon and I started the day by meeting his future Stanford roommate, Jeff, for lunch. They met through Stanford's online roommate matching service and don't know yet if they've been put together as per their request, but he was a really nice guy. He's been working in Minneapolis for a few years since graduating from college, and now he's going back to school for his Master's. Simon's favorite part of lunch was probably when Jeff showed him his car -- a 1999 BMW 540i. I'm convinced the fact that Jeff has BMW is why Simon wanted to room with him! The car will be sold before the trip to California, though.

We had a fancy dinner at Kincaid's in St. Paul for Emily's birthday, after which she opened presents and we all ate cookie cake in her honor. Later that night Simon and I met up with another MMB friend, Kirstin, in the city for some drinks. She had just started her summer internship, so it was fun to hear about her work experience so far!

Our final day in Minnesota involved a trip to the Mall of America, the Midwest's largest tourist attraction, including four levels of shopping and an indoor amusement park. We spent most of the day there, and didn't buy a thing. I'm still not sure how that happened!

Many thanks to my parents for hosting us in Minnesota and treating us to several great meals. Coming up next is the final post in our travel series, which takes us on the road again to the Mount Rushmore National Monument in South Dakota and onward through Wyoming to Fort Collins, Colorado.

To Em

2007-05-27T14:16:00.000-06:00

Just for you, from Simon, Whitney, and the Lusk State Bank in Lusk, Wyoming (pop: 1447)

Venturing West, Part 2

2007-05-27T11:12:00.000-06:00

This part of our trip took us through Wisconsin on I-90 and then I-94 to Minneapolis to visit my Dad, sister, and my mom who had already made the trip out the day before. We rolled out of Long Grove at 10 am sharp and saw "Welcome to Wisconsin" at 11:36. Wisconsin has lots of pretty, green farmland. And here's Simon driving:

Below is my favorite picture of Wisconsin though, which I took about an hour after we stopped for lunch in Mauston. We ate at a Culver's and enjoyed their rich frozen custard. It continuously slides down a ramp from the machine in thick slabs, like Playdoh. It's neat to watch the servers cut off a section only to have more ooze out. It reminded me of being a kid. Our turtle sundae was delicious, and soon we were back on the road to more farmland as we travelled through the Dells of Wisconsin along the Wisconsin River...

We hit the Minnesota border at 4:29 ("Minnesota Welcomes You") and arrived at my Dad's apartment at 4:50, making good time and clocking 677.2 miles on the trip odometer. My parents were just returning from helping my sister Emily move out of her dorm room, and in a short bit Simon and I went with them to dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery in Minneapolis.

Rock Bottom is a small chain with 33 locations in 15 states (including 5 in Colorado) but there are none in Michigan, and Simon hadn't been before although I had been previously with my family. Each restaurant has an on-site brewery where they brew beers unique to the location. I liked my Itasca Extra Pale Ale which had a refreshing and unique orange-grapefruit flavor, as described (click Lagers & Ales), and Simon enjoyed Erik the Red. The other highlight of dinner was our yummy appetizer of two huge Ballpark Pretzels with spicy spinach cheese dip. They come served in a special wrought iron holder, and they're fun to see and eat!

Here's us outside the restaurant on our way out:

After dinner we headed over to see Em at her new summer sublet while my parents brought more of her stuff. She has a nice room and was already busy enjoying the convenience of having a kitchen as she baked desserts for an upcoming event.

A good first day in Minnesota, to be followed by 3 more in our stop there.

Venturing West, Part 1

2007-05-26T22:39:00.000-06:00

After some furious last minute packing on Friday the 11th, we hit the road in Whitney's Ford Focus and set out west. Outside of a couple of construction delays in Michigan, it was a light Friday for driving. We arrived in Chicago just late enough to miss the rush hour.

Here's a nice view of downtown with the sun setting:

And then it was off to Lacey's house just outside town. We went out to a nice little burger place across from the Prairie View train station and got a tour of her own high school campus, where she'll be a teacher in the fall. The next morning brought a breakfast from her dad (yum!) and then we packed up and got back on the road towards Minnesota to see Whitney's family for Mother's Day and her sister's birthday. Many thanks to Lacey and her family for hosting our first night of the trip!

Back soon with the exciting travels through the Dells of Wisconsin!

And For Dad

2007-05-25T14:09:00.000-06:00

See the Clydesdales!

For My Mom

2007-05-25T13:10:00.001-06:00

This is a sidenote to our upcoming trip post (in progress), but here is a picture of what I ate for breakfast last Sunday:

Massive cinnamon rolls, courtesy of the Silver Grill Cafe. Mom, note the raisins in the ones on the left. :)

We will be going back. And back. And back.

Welcome to Our Blog!

2007-05-21T22:58:00.000-06:00

Check here for all interesting updates, stories, and pictures of our summer trip to Colorado, along with other random items of interest and humor. Thanks for reading!

-Whitney and Simon

Coming soon . . . Recap of our weeklong journey to Colorado including stops:

1. Chicago suburbs
2. Twin cities
3. Mount Rushmore

With pictures!