Dart and Map

(originally published October 20, 2014)

I won a trip to Utah from the St. George Tourism site AtoZion. It included a flight from Denver, CO to St. George, UT. Brian, my boyfriend, and I had previously discussed going to Colorado anyway, since we both have friends there and love it, so we took the prize.!! We used some of my United miles to get to Denver and used Priceline to grab a car rental. In retrospect, I wasted miles for such an inexpensive flight. Eh. We snagged a parking space at 405 near LAX. This lot does require a reservation. We were not asked to prove we had one, we did witness a woman on our shuttle who was refused entry due to her lack of one. She parked in another lot. So, I recommend doing this.

The next day, Saturday, the plan was to go to Rocky Mountain National Park and hike followed by the tram in Estes (which I had been on before and enjoyed), checking out the town and finishing up at The Stanley Hotel for a little ghost action. We took forever to get out of the house. Since I chose to sit in the backseat, I started getting carsick. I think the altitude had something to do with the severity of it. This made me dizzy, cranky and unable to make decisions and is why I completely misread a post on Facebook about National Parks being free.  Thinking it was free that next day, we switched our plans. Hours later, I realized that the free day was Monday, not Sunday. Ugh.

We decided to stop in Boulder to eat and found ourselves in heavy rainstorm without umbrellas. We waited out the rain in a parking structure.

Finally, we were able to grab some food on Pearl Street at Old Chicago. We couldn’t seem to agree on other types of food, so the place was perfect. Plus, hey, I’m from Chicago. Since I completely blew the original plans, (Thanks, stomach and non-functioning brain!) Eric, Brian’s friend that lives there, suggested we drive to Mt. Evans. Up and up and up a scary ass road with no friggen rails. As we ascended, the temperature got colder and colder. Like, purple fingernails cold. The wind was so strong that Eric could not open the car door at one point. The walk to the very top was short, but, due to a lack of warm clothing, we skipped that part and just looked up from inside the car. But we did get out to see the view a little lower.

It was so cold, that my fingers could barely move and my body was stuck in a frozen popsicle position. I remember it well from my life in Chicago; When you think that by staying in the same hunchy position, it will somehow keep you warmer. Yea. That never works.

We finished the night with sushi near Denver. Hoping to wake up early the
next day and get a move on. . .

-Jenn

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