Denver (Friday, April 7th, 2017)

We flew from Phoenix Sky Harbor airport to Denver last night. Our plane was scheduled to leave Sky Harbor at 10:15 pm, but we had a minor delay.  We had two pilots and a plane, but no flight crew, so we had to wait for them to show up.  They finally made it and we boarded our plane, only to see that their seemed to be another problem.  We weren't sure what it was, but we waited patiently. They had already closed the tarmac door, but to our surprise, they reopened it and pretty soon the ground crew was on the plane. They had come on to escort one of the passengers back off the plane.  He had been very loud in the airport, and apparently his behavior continued onto the plane, although we couldn't hear it. Live entertainment on a plane is always fun.

We finally arrived in Denver at about 2:30 a.m. and checked into the Holiday Inn by the Airport.  Even though we got to our hotel really late, we still got a really nice king suite because of our platinum membership.  We had a great nights sleep.  The hotel was really nice and quiet.  It is so worthwhile to pick a hotel chain and stick with them when ever possible.  The points really add up fast!

They are putting in a new light rail system by our old house, and have been working on it for several years now.  They discontinued the bus service to the airport in anticipation of the new light rail, but so far, the light rail still hasn't happened.  Apparently, there is an issue with the crossing gates that won't allow them to put the tracks into operation. 

When we sold our house, we were counting on having some sort of mass transit from the airport to Arvada, but with no buses and no train, it has left us in a bit of a bind.  So this morning at about 10:30, Steve's parents picked us up at our hotel and took us back to their house.  We were sorry to have to inconvenience them.

We planned on spending one day at Steve's parents house before heading to Fort Collins to visit our youngest daughter, and to our delight, when we called her, she said she had all of her homework and projects done, and wanted to come down and spend time with all of us in Denver.

Since we left, we've made our youngest daughter drive our old car instead of her's, because it is a little bit more reliable.  So when she got to Denver and saw her car, she was so happy!  

We all took a walk in the park to enjoy the beautiful weather Denver was having, and for Steve and I it was a real treat to see all of the green!!!

The trees are starting to bud out in the city, but there is still some snow on the mountains.  They are beautiful!

The park we walked in is in a subdivision called Lake Arbor.  They have fitness equipment throughout the park, and of course, our daughter had to use most of it.

Pull ups

It was such a fun day spending time with everyone!  Steve's mom had planned a nice lasagna dinner for us, and since our youngest can't eat lasagna, she just brought some of her own food when she came down.  Steve's brother and our sister-in-law joined us.  It was a fabulous evening!

The next morning, before we left Denver, we had some shopping to do.  Our youngest daughter has an internship this summer, and we had to get her enough clothes for 10 weeks.  She's usually a picky shopper, but somehow, we managed to get her lots of clothes in one shopping trip.  Amazing and fun!

Viva Los Angeles (Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016)

We have decided to fly into Los Angeles a day early.  We have learned from past travel that if we arrive a day early into our departure city, we get a good nights sleep before taking off on the long flight ahead of us.  It helps us immensely with our adjustment to the new timezone and the confusion that is likely to occur on the other end.

I entitled this post Viva Los Angeles, because while we were in Lake Havasu City a few weeks ago, they were experiencing a lot of seismic activity in the Salton Sea area of California.  This is the area where the San Andreas Fault meets with many other faults, and is an area of great concern when any of those faults become active. 

From October 1st to October 4th, the City of Los Angeles, and all of the surrounding cities were on earthquake alert. According to the news in Havasu, an earthquake has not occurred in that area for around 300 years, and do to this increase in in seismic activity, they raised the chances of an earthquake from 1 in 6000 to 1 in 100.   But after a few days, the seismic activity slowed down, and we haven't heard any more about it since we returned home, so I guess the countdown continues.  And as far as we know LA is still in tact!

Steve's parents drove us to the airport and we went in to the counter to check our bags.  They have a new process, where you have to log into machines and print out your own luggage tags. It's really easy, and saves a lot of time at the counter.  It was just confusing today because no one knew about it, so everyone went to the counter and got turned away to go get their luggage tags before they could return to the counter.

When we got off the DIA train between the main terminal and concourse C, we noticed a man who looked very lost, so we approached him and asked if we could help. He showed us his ticket which said he was on flight 1404 to Houston, so we took him over to the departures sign to help him find his gate and to our surprise his flight didn't show up on the board.  So we looked more closely at his ticket to make sure he didn't have the wrong day.  He had the right day, and his ticket said gate C25, so we walked him over to that gate to see what we could find out.  

As we were walking, we asked him where he was from as he said Chihuahua, Mexico.  He was on his way home.  When we got to gate C25, they affirmed that we had him at the right gate, so we left him there to wait for his flight.  He was so appreciative of our help, and we are just hoping that if we get that lost on our journey someone will have mercy on us and help us out as well. 

As we headed to find our own gate, we noticed that there was a new restaurant on the C concourse.  It was called Tamales by La Casita. 



We ordered a tamale plate and a steak burrito bowl.  They were both good, but the tamale plate was amazing, and it was only $6.75. They had even smothered the tamales with green chili for us at no extra charge.  We loved it!  We'll have to remember this place for our next trip through DIA.

What's left of the tamale plate.  It was great!

We got our order to go and and filled our water bottle in the airport after we got through security, it's a good thing we did.  The flight was so rough that they were never able to do the in-flight service, so we never got any snacks or drinks for the whole flight.  

I'm sure everyone around us hated us as we ate our Mexican food and drank our water on the plane, but we were very happy to have it.

We left Denver at noon and landed in LA at about 1:30 pm and caught the shuttle to our hotel.  We took a short walk and then enjoyed a Tecate by the pool as we tried to make this day in LA count as the start of our vacation.



When dinner time rolled around we decided we just wanted something easy, so we walked around the corner to the Sizzler Steak House.  

As we were walking over, we noticed a truck parked on the street and Steve said "That truck was there last November when we were here."  We thought that was kind of strange, so we took a picture. We'll see if it's still here next year.

It's a pretty memorable looking truck

When we got to the restaurant, we each ordered the salad bar.  We didn't set our expectations very high, but were pleasantly surprised. They had a really nice salad bar with a large variety of items as well as a lot of pre-made salads.

Salads we made from the salad bar

Pre-made Sweet potato pomegranate salad, Yum!

They brought us garlic toast to go with our salads, and kept clean plates and soup bowls coming.  They also had a soft serve ice cream bar for dessert.  

We're not usually big buffet people, but the salad bar really hit the spot tonight.  

When we got back to the hotel, we took a quick dip in the hot tub and then went back to our room to watch the Country Music Awards and the final game of the world series on TV.  We had to keep flipping back and forth so we wouldn't miss anything.  Right now the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians are tied at 6-6 in the 9th inning.  Yikes!

Although this was just a quick stop on our way to Cambodia we really tried to get our vacation started right. Now we'll call it a night and start out early tomorrow morning on the next leg of our journey.

Happy New Year (January 4th, 2016)

It is now January 4th, and we are thawing out for the first time since we've been home.  The temperatures have not been above freezing in almost a month.  This is the type of weather that gets me down.  Steve and I have tried to go for a walk a few times, but we only go about half a mile and then it's time to come in because we're really cold.  

Shortly after Christmas, our son (in-law) had to head back to Georgia  for a few days of mandatory work.  Our daughter took him to the airport, which is always hard for her.  We took time to take down all of the Christmas decorations and get the house back in order, which always feels kind of good.  

On December 30th our oldest daughter headed up to Estes Park. She is the matron of honor in her sister-in-law's wedding.  She, the groom and the brides dad all headed up early to string some lights and get things set up.  The rest of the bridal party would join them later in the day.  

Our son (in-law) was supposed to arrive back in Denver at about 9:00 p.m. on the 30th of December.  This meant that he would miss the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, but would be there to help with any last minute details for his sister's wedding.  As we watched his flight throughout the evening, it just kept getting delayed.  

For some reason, flights out of Georgia, especially in the evening, are always late.  He ended up getting in at about midnight, so Steve and I were on-call to go get him and help him get to Estes Park as quickly as possible.  We sat in the Cell Phone Lot at Denver International Airport until he saw on the train back to the main terminal, then we headed out to Terminal East to pick him up. It was a very busy night at DIA.  As he came out of the terminal, we were stuck in the traffic waiting to pick people up.  We stayed in the left lane (which is usually the fast lane), but it seemed to be moving slower than the right lane.  As we were waiting, we could see our son (in-law) walking out of the parking structure toward us.  We were still waiting to get into the structure.  We made our way into the right lane, and as we passed through the structure, we could see that there was an SUV parked in the fast lane of traffic, holding up everyone who were trying to pick up their passengers.  

Once we got our son (in-law) in the car, we took him back to the Cell Phone Lot where we had his car waiting for him.  He quickly headed out for Estes Park and Steve and I headed home.  We got home at about 1:00 a.m. and by 2:00 a.m. we were heading to bed.

New Year's eve was wedding day.  Our oldest daughter and son (in-law) were already in Estes Park.  We picked up our youngest daughter's boyfriend at about 4:00 and headed for one of the most beautiful places in Colorado.  It takes about an hour and a half to get there from our house, and we were hoping to get there while it was still light enough to see and maybe take some pictures, but as we came over the hill and started dropping down into Estes Park, the sun was setting.  The beautiful mountains quickly disappeared into darkness.  We were sad that we didn't really get to take in this grand valley before the sunset. 

The wedding was held in a beautiful rustic church that was all decked out for Christmas.  We had a chance to take a few pictures before the ceremony started.

Our youngest daughter and her boyfriend.  I love it when they get all dressed up.  It doesn't happen often.

The Christmas tree and poinsettias made such a pretty backdrop

When the wedding was over, we headed to the reception, which was held in a lodge on the edge of the lake.  Most of the wedding pictures were taken outside during the heat of the day, but the high today in Estes Park was 6 degrees, so from what our oldest daughter told us, it was a cold affair.  We're very excited to see the pictures, I bet they are gorgeous!

The reception was a lot of fun and included party favors and a toast for the New Year, and of course lots of dancing.  We left the reception at about 1:00 am and arrived back home at about 2:30.  

We had a very low key day on New Years day.  Early in the afternoon our youngest daughter wanted to try her hand at some photography, so she and I went on a trek to get some snow pictures.

Bunny tracks

It's been almost a month since it snowed, but the front yard still has quite a bit.

Although it was cold, the snow sparkled and shimmered as we walk along and shot our pictures.  It was great to get outside and enjoy a little fresh air while the sun was up to warm our faces.  We're looking forward to warmer days, but it was nice to enjoy the beauty of Colorado snow.