Denver: Days 1, 2, & 3

Denver was a whirlwind trip. I drove to the airport straight after work to catch my 8pm Friday night flight. The flight went smooth except that I spilt pizza sauce on my shorts at the Detroit airport. My brother Ian and Granny just got to the airport right as the plane landed so neither of us had to wait on the other. My brother is a backpacking guide at a boy scout camp in Northern New Mexico for the summer. He got the weekend off and headed up to Denver to get away from the camp for a while. By the time we got back to my Granny's house it was 10:30 (12:30am Michigan time) and I was ready to crash. Not to mention Ian and I had a big day planned for the next day.

We got up early on Saturday morning and drove about an hour to the Gray's Peak trailhead. This trailhead serves two 14,000 ft peaks: Gray's Peak and Torrey's Peak (left and right peak on the second photograph in the post). We carefully navigated up the rough dirt road in my parent's Honda Civic. We parked about 1/2 mile down the road from the official start to the trailhead since there were so many people on the trail. The first 2 miles or so were relatively flat and we made good time although I was battling the altitude. The last 2 miles were tough. Ian kept the pace high as he was in great hiking shape and very few people passed us on the trail. We took a break about 100 yards from the top and Ian proposed a race. We took off running but after about 50 feet I needed to stop. Ian stopped after about 80 feet of running. Nonetheless, we made it to the top of Gray's Peak in about 2.5 hours. We ate or lunch and discussed whether we had time or favorable weather conditions to make it over the the more difficult Torrey's Peak. We decided to go for it. I had to stop about every 50 feet near the top but we made it from one summit to the next in about an hour. Going down was tough on the knees but a whole lot easier than going up. We got back to the car a 2:15 and got back to our Granny's house at 3:25. That left us enough time to take a shower and eat some dinner before we headed off to the Rockies game. Our experience at Coors Field is narrated in a separate post.

Sunday, the last day of my trip was a day to relax. We hung around our Granny's house and rested our legs from the day before. In the afternoon we ate a Middle Eastern restaurant. As we drove back from the restaurant, we heard some squeaking from the car. We noticed that some people at a gas station were pointed at our car, then we quickly realized that I had left our doggie bag on the roof of the car. Miraculously, were we able to pull the box back in before it flew off the roof of the car. Both Ian and I were leaving Sunday night - me on a 7 pm flight and Ian on a 4 hour drive. Unfortunately for me, my flight was delayed. The silver lining in the delay is that I can now catch up on my blog (including this post). I am not schedule to get back into Detroit until 1:30 am and I am sure work will suck tomorrow. Nonetheless, it has been a fun and exciting trip.