Mountains, museum, no emergency room

My cousin Scarlett was visiting for this past week, ostensibly in town to attend an event at the school where she'll be starting a graduate program in the fall, but also to spend some time hanging out with us (I love it that she visits us!) We were able to have some adventures on Saturday and Sunday, and yesterday I took the day off to enjoy one last adventure before she left.

Saturday, we drove up to Estes Park to show her a mountain town, because when she visited last year while headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park Dan ended up in the emergency room for several hours having a rusty roofing nail removed from his foot. Luckily, this year there was no need for a visit to a local hospital, so we drove on up to Estes and wandered around the touristy bit. I was able to check Jive Turkey's twitter updates (knowing her water had broken) through Scarlett's crackberry, so that was helpful. We watched the taffy pulling machine and admired the rocks in the rock shop and bought some fudge, and I was very disappointed to find that the glass shop was no longer there.

Taffy

Water wheel
After determining that Scarlett's wallet was in the car (and therefore her ID), we drove down the canyon to Fort Collins and had some lunch in Lucky Eddie's (it's kind of like old-west saloon meets Irish pub, and they have a big barrel o' peanuts at the front and you can grab as many as you like and throw the shells on the floor. So we did. I was bummed that I'd left the camera in the car, because there were some seriously impressive peanut shell piles on that floor.

The line on the back said, "Their old flames." My knee, she has been slapped.

Our last stop of the day was at the O'Dells brewing company, where Scarlett wanted to do some beer tasting. Dan sipped a bit of each, but he was driving, and I tasted one or two of them but only found one (I think it was a light-colored wheat beer) that I didn't find thoroughly disgusting. I took a shot of Dan with the beer for his brother, who loves O'Dells, checked the crackberry again to determine that JT had, in fact, had a bouncing baby Spats (hooray!), and we headed back down to Denver.

I drank some of the one on the far left.

He's a beer man.
Sunday we all slept in really late and didn't get going on our adventure until the afternoon. It was also steadily drizzling rain all day long. Even so, we walked to City Park and went to the Nature and Science Museum. I found some cool things to take photos of and really enjoyed the wet air, such a rarity in Colorado. On the way back, we stopped in at the Tattered Cover on Colfax and spent some time browsing. We tried to get ice cream at Lik's but it was closed for Easter.

Rainy flower


This makes a roaring sound when you put a coin in it. Dan said every time he hears it he flashes back to being five years old.


Mined in Colorado


Hee. Nugget.


Aquamarines, also from Colorado.


Tri-lo-biiiiite!


I love so many of the things in the Prehistoric Journey exhibit.


Spine and shadows.


Tortuga!


This thing is enormous. How did they manage to hold their heads up?

Monday was gorgeous and warm, and Scarlett and I walked down to the commercial strip around first and Broadway. I'd heard a lot about the stores in the area (particularly Fancy Tiger) but had never been there other than to go to a movie at the Mayan. I also thought that Scarlett might be interested in some of the stores, and I was right. We ended up seeing all kinds of cool stuff in a shop called Decade (complete with a male cat named Stella, or Stella the Fella as the cashier called him) and having a fascinating conversation with a shop owner. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at the Spicy Pickle at 9th and Lincoln. When we got back to our house, Dan was home from class and eventually we returned to Lik's and got ice cream, then popped into the pub next door for some beer (and girl beer for me; I call hard cider girl beer for those who might be interested).

Stuff is finally starting to put out leaves again.


It's a candy store! and an appliance store? Floor wax and dessert topping?

It was a great long weekend and a great visit. Today I am still quite tired, and somehow with all the walking we did I appear to have hurt my leg again (same leg, different spot), but I'm glad we were able to have so much time to spend with my cousin. She rules.