Family Visit

As I mentioned in my last post, my family (well, my brother and mom) came to visit Golden, CO this weekend and play "Pimp My Crib" with my apartment. :P Jeremy flew in for less than 24 hours to hang out, go to dinner, and accompany us on our day of hiking and whatever else we had time to do. First we drove up to the top of Lookout Mountain at night. I may have scared everyone with my hairpin turns and downshifting, but my mom was freaked out on a stop overlooking the lights of Golden and Denver when Jeremy ventured out to chill on some overlooking rocks. I was advised, in short, not to ever take my grandma up to Lookout Mountain, night time or day time. We recouped on Jeremy's porch and all was well.

Next was a hike on Saturday morning to Panorama Point in Golden Gate Canyon State Park. This was the first hike Jeremy took me on in Colorado and, since we weren't going all the way to the mountains, it offers a spectacular view of them instead. Because of this, that's the hike I picked for my mom and Vin. It started raining shortly after we had our fill of the view at Panorama Point, and when the rain landed it turned to ice. Ridiculous. Pictures below:






Next up we went to the batting cages because I knew it would be fun for Vin. Turns out my mom used to play softball in college. I think I knew that, but Jeremy's prediction that she'd show me up was fulfilled. Jeremy and Vin also challenged each other to a racing duel with the clear winner being Jeremy. While none of the unusual, unscrupulous means can be cited for the win, interesting, natural methods of distraction were employed. ;)

Soon it was time to take Jeremy back to work and we all went to The Market in downtown Denver for lunch. After that was the hotel, then REI, then ice cream in downtown Golden, a walk down Clear Creek and finally rest, showers, and a movie.

Today was pretty chill: donuts, finishing touches, more walking and D'Deli while we watched kayakers.



:)

Sand, sand, sand...

I haven't updated everyone in quite a while, mostly because I'm just taking it easy after moving, the end of the spring semester at CU, and a weekend earlier this moneth that we spent eating crawfish. 180 lbs of crawfish.

That's okay, because all those crawfish were worked off this past weekend at the Great Sand Dunes near Hooper, CO. I even had a new down sleeping bag to test, one with which Jeremy generously surprised me. It worked like a charm and it was the first time I've ever been toasty on a camping trip!

The park was beautiful and strange with dunes, water, mountains, trees, and grasslands:



And speaking of water, we went off the beaten path and realized we were going to have to cross a barely above freezing cold stream of snowmelt water. This was probably the weirdest and most fun thing we could have never expected. :P


The flora and fauna were interesting too, having adapted to the sandy, hot, steep landscape. These neat trees had "eyes" on their bark:

There was also some pretty unique wildlife, though they ventured out after dark so the only evidence they left were their tracks in the sand. However, these little guys are familiar:


The sleeping bag! All ready for a long night's rest after the days activities of running up adn down dunes. Well, crawling up and speeding down...

This shot is Jeremy's and I think it's just awesome: