Rocky Mountain High

I'm sitting here in our hotel room in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We are staying at the Historic Plains Hotel, an awesome old building located in downtown Cheyenne. I love old historic places and this is perfect. We are on the 5th floor and our room is the nicest we've had so far. We have a sitting area complete with couch and two easy chairs. The hotel was built in 1911 to serve cattle barons, oil tycoons and travelers on their way to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. It has a century of history and is just plain cool.

The hotel is across the street from a movie theater, so Zach and David decided to see the late night showing of Iron Man 3. They were excited, because tickets were only $3.50. We spent most of the day in the car, so they are enjoying a little entertainment.

We left late from Grand Junction this morning, because we slept in and then took our time posting blogs and photos. By the time we got on the road, I knew we weren't going to be able to do much of anything in Denver. To complicate things even more, we hit a lot of traffic on I-70 and that added about an hour to our trip. The drive though long was lovely as we climbed higher into the Rocky Mountains. The Colorado River was our constant companion, and we saw people rafting and tubing along the way. At one point, I commented to the boys that I felt like we were in a model railroad. The red mountains and the green pine trees just reminded me of the landscape used by model train builders.

Near Red Rocks Amphitheater

I wanted to stop and see Red Rocks Amphitheater located just outside of Denver. We got there around 4:00 p.m., but our plans were foiled when we realized they were having a concert and a thousand people were converging onto the site. That was a bummer, but I also had been told we could see dinosaur footprints nearby, so we began the hunt for those instead. After several trips around the mountain, and asking for directions, we successfully discovered Dinosaur Ridge which has a wealth of fossils including dinosaur footprints. It was a fun experience for the closet archeologist hidden in me.

Zach having a conversation with a dinosaur

Fossilized dinosaur footprints

It was getting late so we decided to forego a trip into Denver and instead stopped for dinner at Jay's Grille & Bar before heading onto Cheyenne. Since last night we ate at Pasta Jay's, we thought it was apropos to eat at another restaurant with the name Jay in it. It was in honor of our missing traveling companion whose name starts with a J.

Despite the delays and disappointments it turned out to be a pretty nice day.