Road Trip (driving home)

We took 2 days driving home, camping in Idaho about an hour before Boise.  The campground was nice and we were excited to go to Sierra Trading Post in the morning- but ended up disappointed with their customer service and bad labeling  Long story short: a sign said "all camping gear 25% off" yet it didn't apply to any Gregory backpacks (but that wasn't marked), which Adam had picked one out, fell in love with, spent an hour justifying/trying to decide to buy or not (I know, we do not need any more backpacks...), only to find out it wasn't actually on sale.
Anyways, we also had time to stop in Portland to have a sushi dinner with Hannah and Seth.  We made it home by 9:30pm and had the whole rest of the day to recover before going back to our jobs.  (Yes, I do have a job, even though it's only for 1 and 1/2 hours a day!)
All in all, a fantastic trip.

Visiting Margot in Avon, Colorado

Margot's apartment

the ice skating rink

$1 oysters

Margot and Adam in front of the hotel she works at

Adam's cousin, Margot, is a big time skier and she's living and working in Avon, Colorado at a restaurant and hotel (2 jobs).  She showed us her "resort village" and Vail (the neighboring resort village) both of which are very busy and alive in the summers.  The ski areas are very surreal and fake- like Disneyland for adults, complete with man-made lakes and fancy shops, even an ice-skating rink.... It was beautiful there and good to see what Margot is up to!

Colorado National Monument

I bought a National Parks Passport in Rocky Mountain National Park (it kills me that I already visited so many parks without a passport, but my cousin Heather talked me into starting one anyways) so when I saw how close we were to a National Monument (minutes from the rest stop we stopped at) I had to go get my stamp.  It was beautiful and I'm glad we stopped. 

Rocky Mountain National Park

A little bit of car trouble

the hotel from the Shining is in Estes Park (creepy)

groundhogs checking out our tent

birthday presents in the hammock

birthday dinner

Rocky Mountain National Park was really amazing!  It is so high up in elevation that it's hard to even go on a short hike without getting really winded, but we managed a few short hikes to different lakes and to the meadow.  The alpine visitor center is at 11,796 feet and it was super intense driving up there.  You are basically driving on the top of a mountain with steep cliff sides on either side.  Overall, we really enjoyed the park (more than I was expecting).  We camped for 2 nights in the park and experienced an whole variety of weather while we were there (thunderstorms and heat).  I spent my 31st birthday hiking, hanging out in a hammock and cooking over a fire! 
We didn't see any bears, but I did ask the campground ranger about frequency of bears and he said "Yeah, we killed 2 last week because people were being stupid" (leaving food out)...