ARAPAHOE BASIN: June 2 (Day 11)

Day 11 and it was finally time to do some boardin'. We got up early and took the 2+ hour trek to A Basin in Summit County Colorado. They were the last resort open in CO and will be open till June 7, so we got there just in time. The entire drive up was scenic, but unfortunately it was raining the entire time so we couldn't get any nice pictures. Once we got to A Basin, however, we were above the rain and for some of the day above the clouds.





The snow was soft and at some times super sticky. We didn't get any good pictures of the park but we did some filming. The setup was fun; there weren't any jumps but some good rails to play on. Nate caught trying to do a hardway 1 on towards the end of the day and tipped over pretty hard so we called it a day at that point. Because of the rain and heavy clouds, we never thought of putting on sunscreen. Big mistake as I'm paying for it now.

On the way back we crossed Hoosier Pass. Its between Breckenridge and Alma - the highest incorporated town in the US at 10,500 ft. The roads between the pass were windy with hairpin turns all the way up the mountain - super fun to drive up. We even hit some snow showers.





We forged on back to Colorado Springs to meet up with Mike for dinner. However along the way, we ran into none other than the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. What a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately, just like at Prairie Town, we were out of luck. The museum, filled with all sorts of dinosaur memorabilia was already closed. There were a few dinosaurs outside to hang out with though.



We took pictures and played around with the dinosaurs for awhile. Eventually I got the sense that we were over staying our welcome and it was time for us to leave.


We returned to Colorado Springs mostly unscathed and decided it was time to see the town. To start off the night Mike took us out to a nice Mexican restaurant in the West Side of town known as Jorge's. The food was delicious and their Green Chili was awesome - the waiter told us it won the award for best chili in CO Springs.

Stuffed Sopapilla. YUM!


After dinner we ran off to Manitou, the hippie part of town. We were immediately greeted by a nice stoned fellow who tried to sell us hippie quartz crystals. While they did seem like a steal at $8 a piece, we passed up his offer and went on our way. We stopped by a penny arcade, where I was more than happy to dispose of all the pennies sitting around in my car's change drawer.



To finish our night, we headed up the foothills west of town to a SCENEic overlook of Colorado Springs. Unfortunately I blew it and didn't bring my camera that evening. Perhaps I'll make it back before we leave and I can take some night shots. We then followed the road up the mountain, past some huge expensive houses and continued off the paved road further up the mountain. We ran into a couple rock tunnels through the mountain just like this one:


We went back down the other side of the mountain, through more switchback turns and before leaving, stopped at a bouldering rock. We messed around and climbed a bit in our city shoes, basked the glow of my highbeam headlights and Nate's LED headlamp. Hopefully we'll make it back there in the next few days and take some pictures.

Colorado Springs has been a great place for our first stop in the mountainous west. Unfortunately the weather has been a bit of a hinderance to our plans and photoblogging but I hope it will clear up soon. Stay tuned to see what goes on Wednesday and Thursday.