Maria's Road Trip to the Rockies, Part 2: Limon to Estes Park, Colorado

Dan and I have just spent the first night of our trip in Limon, Colorado. Today we're ready to see some mountains.

Monday, June 1, 2009

7:45 A.M. Monday is trash collection day at Tyme Square Inn & Suites in Limon, Colorado. The garbage truck operator is having some trouble emptying the heavy dumpsters in the hotel parking lot, just below our window. Or maybe it's standard procedure to hoist the dumpsters up with that mechanical arm, and then drop them-BAM!--over and over and over again.

I roll out of bed as the garbage truck chugs away. Dan peeks out our window and remarks that the dumpsters are "oddly-shaped." I mumble something about stupid garbage truck drivers and breakfast and Wal-Mart-gotta go to Wal-Mart (does Limon even have a Wal-Mart?) to get my vitamins and dental floss, because I foolishly left mine at home, remember?

My throat feels dry, but not in a coming-down-with-a-cold kind of way. I slip on my flip-flops, exchange my pajama bottoms for denim shorts, fluff my hair, and grab my plastic keycard before I head down the stairs for breakfast in the lobby.

Mmm. Honey nut cheerios, milk, half a blueberry muffin, and orange juice. Denver news on TV: someone's body was found in a field, blah blah blah. I'm not paying attention, just enjoying my muffin. The computer in the lobby has an "out of order, sorry" sign taped to it. Weird. It worked fine the night before.

We shower and check out. I almost accidentally steal my plastic keycard. Do hotel managers even care if guests forget to return those plastic keycards? Probably not, but I'm a total goody-goody, so I bat my eyelashes at Dan, and he runs outside to get the keycard out of my shorts in the suitcase. My hero!

Dan is excited to try out the GPS my parents lent us-a Garmin Nuvi. I'm the one who figures out how to properly attach the GPS-holder to our windshield. The GPS locates us and is happy to lead us to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We jump back onto I-70, our favorite interstate, and plug in the iPod.

Coldplay...Blondie's greatest hits...More grass, dotted with shrubs and yuccas (I think they're yuccas), and cows and pastures that go on forever. I don't perk up until we spy mountains in the distance. Finally! There they are!

Soon there are more buildings than cows, and Denver swallows us up. The GPS does a kick-ass job in the city. We only miss one turn, and that's because of road construction.

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is great! My favorite exhibits are Gems & Minerals and Prehistoric Journey. The Egyptian Mummies exhibit is cool, but it needs more mummies. Space Odyssey is swarming with kids. Since my own kids are back home in Kansas City, eating ice cream and watching movies with Nana and Papa, I'm not really in the mood to hang out with a bunch of shrieking kids. Besides, all those kids are making me miss my shrieking kids! My son would absolutely love all the interactive space exhibits here, and both of my kids would have a blast in Prehistoric Journey, checking out all the dinosaur skeletons.

We're disappointed by the planetarium. The facility itself is nice, but the film doesn't teach us anything new. We thought (hoped) the planetarium show was going to focus on the search for life outside of our solar system. No such luck. My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets...Yawn.

The museum's wildlife dioramas are awesome. I'm still missing my kids. I imagine my daughter pressing her nose against the glass, saying, "Dat's a BIG walwuss, Mommy!" and my son running from display to display, shouting, "Whoa! Is that a real grizzly bear?!"

We eat lunch in the museum cafeteria. I grab a slice of cheese pizza and fix a salad. Dan gets a rice bowl with tofu and green beans, and loads up another plate at the salad bar-with even more tofu! Uh, what the heck's going on? Dan's not a vegetarian. I'm an ex-vegan, myself-now a lacto-ovo vegetarian who sometimes eats fish. My meal total comes to $8; Dan's is $14. He wants to share some of his tofu stuff with me. "If I'd wanted tofu, I would have gotten tofu," I tell him.

The tofu doesn't remedy Dan's awful gas situation (it all started the night before with his chicken fried steak at Denny's). PHEW! "Don't walk behind me," Dan warns. He doesn't have to tell me twice! We pick out some souvenirs for the kids in the gift shop: two dinosaur T-shirts and a "fossil cast" of a T-Rex claw.

Farewell, Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Buh-bye, Denver. The Garmin Nuvi is ready to take us to Estes Park. The weather's pretty nice, so I can roll down my window as needed (we don't have gas masks in the car).

But, wait a second! What about my vitamins and dental floss? We'll stop when there's a Wal-Mart right off the road, we decide. I've chosen to play System of a Down's Toxicity on the iPod for some wild reason. Geez, those dudes are angry! Dan knows all the lyrics, and can drive and headbang at the same time. Wow!

Soon we're in Boulder, which must be one of the prettiest cities in the nation. Dan and I spent the first night of our honeymoon in Boulder, almost nine years ago. Look over there-a Target, right off the road. We pull into the parking lot. I grab my canvas shopping bag because everyone is "green" in Boulder, Colorado, right? Wrong! I see at least three people pushing shopping carts, loaded with plastic Target bags, to their cars-non-hybrid cars. Oh well.

Dan and I both used to work at Super Target (different locations). It's always a novel experience for us, visiting a plain old, non-super Target. Dan finds a jacket on clearance for $16. Actually, I find it for him while he's using the restroom (poor guy; he really shouldn't have eaten all that tofu). Then we wander around the grocery aisles, pick out some blueberry granola, peanut granola bars, and Pop Secret microwave popcorn ("movie theatre butter" flavor, Dan's favorite), and find my dental floss and vitamins.

The drive from Boulder to Estes Park is gorgeous: mountains and streams and health-nuts riding their bikes, oh my! (Would Mickey ride his bike on one of these curvy mountain roads? Looks pretty dangerous and difficult to me.) We listen to 80's music and chew Juicy Fruit gum because our ears are popping like crazy.

We don't stop until we see the official Estes Park sign, overlooking the valley. Chipmunks (or ground squirrels? Is there a difference?) surround us as we get out of the car. My goodness. Doesn't anybody obey those "don't feed the wildlife" signs? Well, I, for one, do not feed the chipmunks, but I do start singing "The Chipmunks" cartoon theme song, which annoys Dan. Come on, that's funny! Alvin, Simon...Theodore! I sit down on the rock under the "Estes Park" welcome sign to pose for a picture, and a chipmunk scampers right up to me, stands up, and puts his paws on my thigh. I don't know whether to scream or to pet the little guy. I do neither. "Hey, Chippy, what's up?"

Somehow we manage to pull back onto the highway without running over any chipmunks. The Nuvi takes us through town, and then up a hill to Mary's Lake Lodge. We recognize my parents' condo; we stayed there three years ago with my parents, my kids, and my grandma. Dan and I slept on the pull-out couch in the living room with our daughter in bed with us and our son on the couch cushions on the floor next to us. Very intimate, eh? This time will be different. We have the whole condo to ourselves! Yes!

We have to climb two flights of stairs to check in at the lodge, and, boy, our lungs don't like the thinner air. "I feel like a 65-year-old smoker," I wheeze as we look out from the lodge's deck. The view is exquisite. Snowcapped mountains, tree-dotted foothills, Mary's Lake, an elk grazing next to the road...(I'll post some pictures here so I don't have to bore you with my inadequate descriptions, okay?)

We eat supper in The Tavern at Mary's Lake Lodge. My fish and chips meal isn't real great. The potato chips are homemade, and they are good, but I'm not a big fan of potato chips. My fish is over-fried and tasteless, while my homemade coleslaw-with mandarin oranges on top-is delicious. I order key lime pie for dessert. The pie arrives, covered in zigzags of green gel, surrounded by mounds of whipped cream (totally unnecessary, in my opinion). It's nowhere close to the best key lime pie I've ever had. Dan is happy with his Fat Tire beer and meatloaf meal. We take our leftovers back to the condo and settle in for the night.

Is that a Jacuzzi in our bathroom? Woo-hoo! (Note to Dan: The water in a Jacuzzi is supposed to be HOT.)

We force ourselves to stay up to watch Conan O'Brien's very first Tonight Show. I love Conan! It's great to see him back on TV. But the bed is very comfy, and I doze off shortly after the monologue.

Join us on our tour of the historic, haunted Stanley Hotel in Part 3. Click here to read Part 3 now.

Sources:
Personal experience
I love you, Dan!
Denver Museum of Nature and Science homepage: http://www.dmns.org/main/en/
For more information about Mary's Lake Lodge in Estes Park, go here: http://www.maryslakelodge.com/