The Bro is Here!

Picked up Austin from the Denver airport this morning! It is so good to see him again and share life together, especially this whole journey. Looking forward to having my adventure buddy with me this week…

Mom had researched some fun things to do while we were in Denver and found a scenic drive up Mount Evans that looked enjoyable, so after we picked Austin up from the airport, we headed over to Mount Evans. Doing a little more research we found that the peak of the mountain was up in the 14,000’s and all-of-a-sudden mom wasn’t too keen on doing the whole “scenic drive” thing. We convinced her that it’d be good and she went along with us(not like she really had a choice since we were driving! 🙂 ) and around 11,000 ft she finally said that she had had enough and was fine with just staying at a visitor center that we had come across at that time. Leaving her with pencils, paper and rain coat, Austin and I were on our way up again. I suppose it was a good thing that mom got out when she did ’cause the roads kept getting thinner and thinner and steeper and steeper. There were points where we both agreed it should have been qualified as a single lane road, but we made it up to the peak without any incidents thankfully. There was an over abundance of people and cars and a shortage of parking spots, so it made it even tighter driving up the mountain since people were parking along side the already skinny road.

We were blessed with a spot right in the parking lot since a person left just as we arrived and we were first in line. Once we parked we still had another 50-70 ft to climb until we reached the top of the mountain. The wind up at the peak was just incredibly strong, thankfully it wasn’t raining – or snowing since it was only 39 degrees – ’cause that would of made for quite the slippery and rather “fun” ride down the mountain.

Picking up mom on our way down the mountain, we made our way back towards Colorado Springs to pick up a few items and also to say goodbye to the family we had stayed with. We also wanted to show Austin where we had been in Colorado Springs and give him a short tour of the city. The holiday traffic was atrocious and every place we went was crazy, but we made our way around slowly and soon we were on our way towards Salida, CO to setup base at some wonderful friends’ home.

Everyone is a bit tired from all of the days travels and we will definitely sleep well tonight. Looking forward to what tomorrow will hold and starting anew.