Colorado

Hey everyone! Laura here. I am currently laying on the couch at one of my relative's house enjoying my last night in Denver. It is amazing to realize how much we have come to appreciate the little victories on this trip, such as sitting on a couch, or washing your clothes in a functional machine rather than a sketchy stain-producing laundromat washer. Needless to say, we've been having a great time in Colorado. We spent our first two nights out of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Springs, and after finding the cheapest priced motel we could find, we each took long, hot showers for the first time in weeks. It was glorious. What was even more wonderful was that before arriving, I did my research and found out that Colorado Springs is home to a Dunkin Donuts, one of two Dunkins we have found since leaving the east coast. I had two gift cards, and so we dined for free both mornings. The first morning was a rather stressful experience, since apparently the Thursday morning shift is the least important shift of the week, and is therefore put in the hands of a polite but completely incompetent man at the register that doesn't know what a wheat bagel looks like, and an Asian woman that speaks the absolute minimum amount of English needed to get through her Dunkin Donuts interview. Her co-worker couldn't communicate with her, and we certainly couldn't either. Elijah spent a good five minutes trying to convey to her that he wanted one six-piece order of hash browns, rather than six nine-piece orders of hash browns. It sounded like a regular comedy act, but early in the morning while watching the silly guy manhandle my cup of coffee, I wasn't laughing. On the upside, we did eventually get everything that we asked for, and since the cashier was incapable of running my giftcard through the register properly, he finally gave up and gave us our breakfast for free. This was all fun and games after I was happily fed and caffeinated, but at the time I was in no mood.

After our eventful morning, we drove around to many of the small towns surrounding Colorado Springs, all of which were lovely and full of charm. We had one box of pasta left from camping, and we planned on cooking it up for lunch in the park in Old Colorado City to save money. As with an unfortunate amount of our cooking plans over the past weeks, just as my stomach began to growl, the rain began to fall. So instead of going out to dinner, we used our restaurant budget on lunch, and were left to cook the pasta for dinner. It was actually rather convenient because Old Colorado City was having free blues music in the park that evening and I thought it would be nice to cook up our pasta to eat during the concert. Of course, it didn't go quite as poetically as that. As soon as we parked on a side street right in front of a house full of construction workers, Elijah insists that he is not comfortable cooking in the park at a picnic table. So what do we do? We set up camp right there on the curb in front of the construction workers, and cooked our pesto pasta right there. Elijah filled up his pot with water from the library, and we sat like hobos on the curb with our little camp stove humming away. Once our food was done, we carried our pot of pasta, a blanket, and my bowl to the park and had a lovely dinner while watching a one man blues show on stage. Despite the absurdity, it was actually a very pleasant evening.

The next morning we hesitantly returned to Dunkin Donuts, warring between the prospect of having to deal with the same employees but still wanting a meal covered by a gift card. With a stroke of luck, we found that Friday mornings are host to a bunch of completely capable set of workers, and we got our breakfast quickly and seamlessly. While eating breakfast, I surprised Elijah with tickets to the Colorado Rockies game that night for his birthday, which he had been whining about going to since Arches. So after breakfast we headed to Denver to stay with my Aunt Patty's brother and his family, with Patty arriving the next afternoon. We made a bee-line for the washing machine, and enjoyed a lazy afternoon eating cereal, watching tv, and doing laundry. That night we went to the baseball game and other than ten minutes of rain, it was a great game. On Saturday we went to get an oil change, and since of course it couldn't JUST be an oil change, we had to get our serpentine belt replaced as well. As far as car problems go it wasn't a horrible problem, and shortly after we returned back to the house Patty arrived and a raucous party ensued.

We had intended on leaving Colorado this morning, but the World Cup final was on and we were easily persuaded into staying another free night with fun family and good food. We are leaving first thing in the morning for Kansas City to get ourselves some delicious barbeque before heading out to Cincinnati the next morning. We will blog once more in a day or two.

Happy Birthday mom!
Laura