Thanksgiving

So, it's probably time for a second post ... but I wouldn't want to rush into anything.

Just before the first post I was in Denver for Thanksgiving (with P's family), and I had a great (and slightly chilly) time. I got to see prarie dogs and snow, two things we don't have in Sebastopol. Technically, we do get snow on the ground every 20-30 years, but I was living in LA for the only time it's happened in my lifetime.

Day 1 (Wednesday): We left the house at 3am, just after I realized that we were flying out of San Francisco, not Oakland. I had been telling everyone the wrong airport, including P! We started off the visit to Colorado with our traditional feast at Chipotle. It's P's favorite restaurant and there aren't any within about an hour drive of home, so we make up for it when we travel. After that we visited the Columbine Memorial and walked around the lake, watching the prarie dogs and chatting (it was the four of us: P, me, and P's parents). We stayed with them in Littleton for the first two nights of the trip.

Day 2 (Thursday) : We drove to Boulder on Thanksgiving Day for some sightseeing and dinner at P's aunt's house. She has a beautiful house right up against the foothills with tons of windows and a great view of the city lights at night. There was a lot of delicous food and conversation with relatives, but since I'm not including the names or photos of people at this point, there's not much else I can say about it.

Day 3 (Friday): The day after Thanksgiving we took the long way through the mountains to P's aunt's cabin in Eldora. Lunch was at Beau Jo's pizza in Idaho Falls, very tasty "mountain style" pizza. Then we stopped in Central City to gamble for a an hour or so (I put $1 in a penny slot machine - I bet one penny at a time - and left with $2.75, a 175% return on my investment!). The photo below is of pretty much the whole town, the casino we went to was one of the old-fashioned, multi-story buildings straight ahead.

It started snowing as we got closer to the cabin, not too hard, mostly the wind was just stirring things up.

Day 4 (Saturday): In the morning it was really windy and snowy (notice the tree with all the branches on one side and the covered rental car).

We flew out later that day, and, although I had fun when I was there, the constant action wore me out and I was glad to be home and very glad we had Sunday to recover before returning to work. We left home at 3am Wednesday and got back at about 1:30am Sunday, so the whole trip took just under 4 days!