I was going to start this post with “so” but then I thought about how many other posts I’ve started with “so,” so I decided not to. I took 634 pictures. Make sure you click all the links! (I also wrote this yesterday, so all these events were yesterday’s…)
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We left home, Sarasota, 85°, 20 ft above sea level, at almost 6AM this morning. We flew direct from Tampa to Denver, packed our bags into a Hyundai Santa Fe, and decided that we should go from a very low elevation to a very high elevation. After a lunch at Chipotle, we headed out to the Mt. Evans Scenic Byway, the highest paved road in America. I got excited about some little mountains when we first got on the road… little did I realize their laughable smallness in comparison to the fourteeners that we were about to see.
We stopped a few times along the way and took a whole bunch of pictures. I climbed some rocks… After about an hour, we finally reached the base of Mt. Evans. The Mount Evans Scenic Byway is a treacherous road, only open during a few months of the year. Everything we had read said that the road opened on May 28, so we figured we would be okay. I called to make sure, and was told that the road’s conditions were almost passable, and that the road could be opened momentarily. So we headed up.
The air got cooler, the trees sparser, and we got to Echo Lake Park. There I found a small pile of snow under some trees, even though it was well over 60° out and I was comfortable in a T-shirt. I threw a snowball at my dad, looked at some ducks on the lake, and we continued up the mountain.
The frequency of little snow piles started increasing until we were driving in a jagged, barren, semi-arctic otherworld full of rocks. It was absolutely breathtaking. We got to a point where we could see Echo Lake from a few thousand feet above it. It was really cool. The neighboring mountain peaks were beautiful and majestic, and the road was cut through the edge of the mountain with a wall of rock on one side and a precipitous drop on the other. I have never seen a road with so many switchbacks and hairpin turns. And on top of that, it was almost too narrow for two cars to pass, so we ended up pulling over to let people pass a few times.
We get to the first snowy mountain overlook, and there’s a snowman on top of a pile of rocks, so of course, I climbed up and got a photo with it. Then we threw a couple snowballs at each other, and I went exploring… I climbed around to the back of the pile of rocks, and started rolling a snowball. The snow was really icy and absolutely perfect for packing together. You could roll your snowball and it would pick up ALL the snow underneath it, down to the grass. I got a pretty big snowball in about three or four minutes. I was being yelled at to get back into the car, but I stubbornly kept rolling my snowball out of sight behind the big pile of rocks. Finally I pick up my snowball and struggle back over the rocks toward the parking circle and my parents. My dad quickly got out of the car and helped me roll two more snowballs and we made another, bigger snowman and left it right at the edge of the road.
We got back in the car and continued along the 14 mile trek up to the summit. We passed this gorgeous lake at the base of a ridge, and stopped to take photos.
After more cliff-edge roads, hairpin turns, switchbacks, rocks and endless snow, we finally made it to the top at 14,130 feet. There was a half-building thing at one edge, and another small peak at the other. I couldn’t make it all the way up to the parking lot at the top without climbing all the way to the summit. So my dad and I put on our hiking boots and climbed up to the top. I got bored just climbing up the switchbacky path, so I started taking shortcuts directly up the rocks. I reached the top, and it was the most breathtaking view I’ve ever seen. It was incredible.
We found the two little bronze markers that signify the summit, and headed back down. We got in the car and started our slow descent. I kept getting yelled at for standing up out the window and taking photos over the roof of the car. But hey, that got me some really cool photos…
The snow on the sides of the mountains looked really shiny, almost like a pearl-color, and I really wanted to go feel it and make a snow angel. So we stopped and I got out, and did just that. But the shininess of the snow was a direct result of its consistency. It was the densest snow I’ve ever felt. The top surface wasn’t icy, but it was very dense and hard. I didn’t make much of an impression in it…
We get down to the bottom (cell phone reception again…) and head to the Curtis Hotel. We check in to the hotel, my mom and sister go to the theater right on the corner to see Young Frankenstein, and my dad and I head out to the Buckhorn Exchange to sample some meats that we definitely don’t get in Florida. The restaurant claims to be the oldest in Denver. It was in this little house-like thing stuffed full of taxidermied animals (including some double-headed sheep thing) with some tables and booths. We ended up ordering the same thing – a special with 4oz filets of buffalo and elk. Everything on the menu was really really expensive, but the meat was very good. Buffalo tastes pretty similar to beef, but it’s much softer, much more tender, and leaner. Elk is also very lean, but it doesn’t taste or feel like beef. It’s got a much denser, chewier texture, while being tender at the same time. It has a much stronger flavor that I can’t really describe, other than that it doesn’t taste like beef or lamb or anything else I’ve ever eaten.
It was a good day.
