Colorado Tentacles

May 19. 2011

Hello Denver.  Goodbye Denver.  We didn’t get to see too much of you, since we got into town late last night.  BUMMER.  It’s OK – It’s really cloudy here, so we haven’t even seen the mountains yet.  UGH  We are anxious to get on the road to see those mountains.  So far Denver looks pretty flat.

Let me recap what happened last night, before I get ahead of myself.  So we are on the road, driving through Kansas and East Colorado.  While I am taking a nap in the car, Wes has come up with a conspiracy theory about these huge grain silos that happen to be placed every few exits.  The weird thing is that there are huge arms that SHUT DOWN THE FREEWAY sometimes.  The sign says “When lights are flashing, freeway is closed.” Then you have to exit at some random Podunk place and either wait the undetermined amount of time for the gates to open, or find an alternative route all the way through both states.  So WES thinks that there are nuclear missles in these silos.  ??????  I said, “Maybe it’s aliens!”  He said “Don’t be sarcastic.  It could be.”  LOL – The real theory is that there is something very important in these areas of the states that have to get moved as quickly as possible on the freeway.  Therefore they shut it down to move whatever it is as quickly as possible, without battling with regular traffic.  Anyone have any thoughts on this?  We’re both very curious.

So after that whole thing, we make our way towards Denver.  And Colorado is FLAT!  Can you believe it?  Us Mid-Westerners think that all of these western states are full of mountains, but really the Eastern part of Colorado is entirely flat.  I mean OHIO flat!  :-)  And because of this flatness, the speed limit is 75MPH!  Needless to say, we made excellent time through Colorado.  HAHA  We did get hammered by this storm through Colorado.  It was scary looking as we drove under it.  We even saw swirling clouds right above us.  Wes punched the gas so we wouldn't see the outcome of those small forces of nature.  Here are a couple pictures so you can live the horror with us.  LOL

So we called ahead to book this Hotel that I had picked out, Loews Denver Hotel.  It was by far, the nicest hotel either of us had ever stayed in.  AND we could have the cats with us.  AWESOME.   Beautiful hotel and a beautiful room.  They had stuff waiting there for the cats.  Water, food bowls, treats, etc…  We let the cats roam around the room while we made our way to the restaurant downstairs.  We were only 1 of 3 tables in the entire place.  We got calamari as an appetizer, I had jumbo shrimp cocktail for dinner, and Wes ordered a Seafood Linguini entrée.  Now – for those of you who have not had friend calamari before, it’s delicious, but also slightly creepy because they give you a few WHOLE baby squid with no heads.  Naturally I do not eat these (I have tried them in the past. Gross).  But Wes will eat them, so he did right off the plate.  YUM for him I guess.  BUT – when his seafood entrée arrived, it had these baby squid in them.  They weren’t breaded, so you could see everything on these little guys.  I politely declined having a bite of his dinner.  He proceeded to eat around these squid, until the time came when he couldn’t avoid them any longer.  He thought, “Well, I’ll just spin some of the pasta around it and I won’t even know it’s there.”  So he tried to execute this plan, to no avail.  When we went to pull the bite up off of the plate, the 8 legged sea creature popped out and said “HELLO” right on the end of his fork, practically spraying him with the sauce.  HILARIOUS.  We both died laughing, while Wes took the bite, (with his eyes closed).  He grinned and said “Not bad.”  (I still declined the bite)  IT GETS WORSE.  He decided to examine the other baby squid left on his plate, only to make the scientific discovery that it STILL HAD IT’S MOUTH.  OH MY GOD.  GROSS. 

That’s enough talk about gross food.  SORRY.

We did order room service this morning for breakfast (because I didn’t want McDonalds AGAIN).  Oatmeal and a Belgian waffle.  YUM!  Excellent way to start the day.

We packed up all of our stuff and I held both cats while Wes drug our luggage cart behind us.  The cats were awesome.  I mean, AWESOME.  They struggled a little bit, but they were calm and quiet in the lobby.  People were all around and they just clung to me while Wes checked us out and went to get the car.  It was amazing.  Everyone around us kept telling us how impressed they were.  Our kitties are turning into expert travellers.  LOL

So we’re on the road again out of Denver and out of Colorado.  Stopping at Starbucks to get our fix for the morning.  (Thanks Aunt Pat & Uncle Bob for the gift card!)  Still have yet to see any mountains.  Big time bummer.  We’re probably surrounded by them, we just can’t see them because of the clouds that are covering the sky.  It’s OK though.  I think we’re going to get to drive through them in an hour or so, so that’ll be fun.  Lots of pictures to come.  I’ll write again once we get to Salt Lake City.  9 hours to go.  And  we haven’t given the cats their meds yet.  Going to be an interesting day. 

(Just as I was getting ready to post this we caught a glimpse of the mountains through the fog.  COOL)