Trip to Denver, Colorado

September 25, 2006

Why on Earth would you ever go to Colorado? It's so COLD there!
My fiance Stephanie was sent out there for two weeks to help train in the new corporate office of Corporate Express. Considering the company paid for her hotel, rental car and gas, I took this opportunity to visit her for the weekend. She's scheduled to return to San Diego this Friday.

So what did y'all do there?
I arrived in Colorado friday evening after catching a few planes (with a pit-stop in Phoenix for a Grande White Mocha from Starbucks). We mostly just hung out and drove around the town.

Saturday was the fun-filled day. We first peeled our eyes open at the early hours of 9:00 am (ok ok so we slept in a little!) and drove south for about 45 minutes to Garden of the Gods. This place was neat! There are various hiking paths around these awesome red mini-mountains and cool cafe just up the hill. The best part about this place is that it's free, so you'll often see people with their pets just walking around and enjoying the outdoors. We snagged a lot of pictures of this beautiful place.

So you drove 45 minutes to see a bunch of rocks?
Yes!! That place was awesome! But while we were there, we snagged up some brochures for some more touristy stuff in the area, and then went to eat in a cute little historic town called Old Colorado City. Four blocks of their tiny downtown is actually preserved in the old original style and there are lot of cool little local shops including a chocolate factory. We had lunch at a tiny little cafe that only served breakfast and lunch -- and it was GOOD!

So, food and dirt... I'm still not impressed! I have that in my own backyard!
Yea, well your backyard probably doesn't have Pike's Peak, a nearby mountain that you can drive up for some fun in the snow! I also heard there's a train you can take to the top... maybe I'll have to try that next time because the road was blocked off to cars after about 7 miles. But we did get to see a very nice lake named Crystal Lake. You don't get to see much of this type of stuff in San Diego, although Lake Murray is pretty cool.
What else did you do? Tell me more!!
Dinner back in Aurora (near Denver) was "most excellent". We ate at Ted's, where they feature Bison in about the majority of their entrees. The cool thing about Bison is that it has 1/3 the fat and double the protein of beef -- or maybe it's the other way around? Well it's supposed to be really good for you, plus it's tasty! I opted for the bison meatloaf and Stephanie had a bison burger.

Sunday was a bit more relaxing. We went to downton Denver around noon and walked along their huge downtown mall. We ended up having lunch at this one Cuban restaurant (I can't remember the name...) and it was SO good! We started off with Cuban ceviche with plantane chips, with a mango mojito :)  For entrees, I had their giant scallop meal, and Stephanie had bass. We tried to get the waiter to roll us back to the car but he said he's not allowed to leave the premises during his shift, so we just walked with our stuffed bellies like normal people.
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