Coloraindo

We went to Colorado.  We had terrible timing.  The trip originated because we wanted to attend a friend's wedding, and we planned to use that event as an excuse to visit another friend, do some hiking, drive through the park, and generally soak in some Colorado awesomeness.

It began raining two days before we arrived.  It rained for most of our first 46 hours in the state.  After we arrived in Fort Collins, the interstate was closed behind us.  For the first full day of our visit, we only had friendly sprinkling rain.  The three of us spent some time downtown, hiding from the rain in a coffee shop, a book store, and Snooze.  Really, we were stalling.  We had to burn some time before our scheduled tour of New Belgium Brewery, which was fascinating, delicious, and told us nothing about brewing beer (but their company history and corporate dynamic is amazing.  Go there.  Take the tour.  Drink some beer.  Tell Bernie I said Hi.).  More on that later.

By the next morning, flood waters in Fort Collins had severed our end of town from... pretty much everything else in town.  The hike was out of the question, and they were evacuating everyone from RMNP, so the drive was canceled, too (as though we could have see anything through the constant rain).  We spent the day reading, watching the rain, and building block towers (there might have been some help from the local two-year-old).  The weather broke in late afternoon, and The Girl escaped for a run.  I took a walk.  We still weren't sure road conditions would allow us to get to the wedding--or to leave once it was over.  Rock slides had been reported along I-70 (one of the other wedding guests was behind a car that got flattened by a falling rock.  He looked up to see other rocks moving on the mountainside, and left with all due haste.).

Our trip didn't go as we had planned, but we got to see some good friends, we got to try some excellent beer (New Belgium has a sour they only release every four years or so that blew The Girl's socks clean across the room), we attended a wedding at nearly 12,000 feet, and we saw a moose.  Oh--and we did finally get to go on a hike, on our last day in Colorado.  Considering the reports we heard from around the state of flood damage, we got off pretty easy.