Howdy all!

So, a few people commented on yesterday’s post. I guess that means you do want me to keep blogging. Since that’s the case, here we go =).

Today was nothing too terribly special for the last day – in the morning we had a tasty breakfast, then went down to a local sports store to see if we could find me some cleats at a superb price. Unfortunately … that didn’t happen, so I guess I’ll be checking on ebay. Anyway, after that we headed out for a brief tour of where my dad works. Since it’s fairly high security we weren’t able to go inside the building or anything, so we didn’t get to see much (and I didn’t take any photos).

Once we got home, the afternoon was basically a hang-out time. Keltie and I figured out our plans for our return, but apart from that not too much happened. I worked on my entry for the 2009 Github contest and took a few photos – the first three (the daytime lightning was definitely a lucky shot).

After supper, dad and I headed back to Garden of the gods to see if we could get some sweet shots. Unfortunately, the lighting wasn’t co-operating (it was cloudy) so we didn’t get anything too spectacular. Once we got back, though, the sun peaked out of the clouds so I managed to snap a few photos that turned out not too bad =).

Tomorrow we’re off to Twin Falls, Idaho!

I’mma make a stink here. We’re hard at work updating this blog every day for you and there’s no comments! To that end, until someone posts a comment we are no longer going to update about our excellent adventures. So there. Neener neener neener.

Anyway, enough complaining. Today was a pretty straight forward day with not too much happening. I did get to try out my dad’s macro lens, though, which was lots of fun (see the pictures). And, with me being the music fiend I am, we went to Mardel and I bought lots of CDs (the bottom two on the stack were from yesterday at Target). And two t-shirts, which you may only see in person. For those of you who aren’t from the valley, yes, that means you have to come and visit to see them.

We didn’t do too much for the rest of the day, although Keltie punched me lots with the intention of giving me a dead arm. She failed, I’m glad to say =D. I retaliated and she (apparently) has 4 dead arms and a charlie horse in both legs. Besides that, she’d like to report that she had a lovely day as well. She went shopping with mom and bought green chilis along with some stuff from Mardel as well. And that’s about all. Terribly exciting, isn’t it? Oh, apparently she finished a book too, which is nice, isn’t it?

Enough rambling, here’s some pretty pictures to look at! Ah yes, and one of them is a daytime shot of the city to compare with the shots from yesterday at night.

So today we crossed the continental divide. Well, not so much crossed as “stopped at, walked around for a while, took some pictures, then carried on”. We also happened to be at 12,075 feet at that point (3,680 meters for you Canadian folk) so walking around was a little more strenuous than at the 150 or so feet (50 meters for you Canadian folk) we’re used to being above sea level.

In any case, I’m getting ahead of myself. Today was our last day in New Castle, CO. We began the day with pictures. However, you heard about that from Keltie’s previous post, so on to the rest of the events from today!

We decided that we’d drive to Colorado Springs via highway 82 which is through Aspen, so that we could say that we’ve actually been through Aspen. Keltie drove the first leg to Aspen, and we took a bit of a break there and poked around. After that, we were on our way to the top! Now, unlike our Canadian highways (and most American highways) the route from Aspen to Twin Lakes is a little crazier. In some places the road narrows and it’s more like a lane and a half rather than two lanes wide, and in other places there aren’t any guard rails because there just wasn’t room to put them anywhere! However, the drive was worth it as the few from the top is breathtaking – probably one of the coolest in America. Like I mentioned previously, we were at an altitude of 12,075 feet, although if you were willing to hike a bit you could probably go up another 1,000 – 1,500 ft to the very top of some of the peaks. We weren’t up to that, though, as the air was thin enough where we were. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, although we did stop in Buena Vista, Colorado for some fantastic subs from a local place. Ah yes, and we actually managed to crash our GPS! It’s a Windows CE based machine, so we’ve had to reset it probably once a day. However, today we actually managed to get the mapping program to throw an exception. When I get a chance I’ll see what kind of errors a GPS program throws.

Seeing my parents was great as we haven’t seen them since last fall at my sister’s wedding – we had a great dinner and enjoyed conversation around the table. I was stoked, though, as during dinner a storm had moved in so after dinner a got a chance to do something that’s really rare back home – take pictures of lightning! It takes both a bit of work and a bit of luck, but I think I got some alright ones for a first try – that’s up to you guys, though (=.

So, as the title says, today has been the first full day of our post-retreat trip that we’ve stayed at the same place all day; that would be Keltie’s Aunt and Uncle’s home in New Castle, Colorado. We didn’t have too much planned for today, so we got some stuff done and just lazed around. Keltie and her mom went out looking for a garage that’d recharge our A/C in the car (since it wasn’t working so well) while I went out with Keltie’s dad and cruised around town. We washed the bugs off the car (they tend to stick real good at 75 mph) and just went generally exploring.

This afternoon Keltie and I went down to the river (the Colorado river) and hung out for a bit – the water’s über cold and the current’s pretty strong so we just waded to about our knees – nothing too terribly exciting.

After all the excitement this day, who’d think it could get better? Well, it did. This evening we were off to the Carbondale mountain fair where we hung out, ate way too much junk food, listened to some blues/country and got some cool stuff (I got a print from a photographer from China, click here and don’t mind the awful site to see some of his work).

Anyway, I think that’s all for this evening, so now on to the pictures …

So … another 20-hour day today, and we were physically present in 4 different states. However, all things considered it went well. Our only delays were airport related (again) – our bags didn’t come with us to Phoenix, so we had to wait at the airport for them (only about 25 minutes, though, which was nice) and the shuttle from the hotel where we parked our car took 50 minutes to arrive at the airport, which was rather lame. Once we got in our car, though, things were great (albeit rather warm – our air conditioning doesn’t do much). We made excellent time from Seattle apart from a brief delay due to construction (from 3 lanes down to 1). Lunch was at Ellensville (we think – near the Gorge where Creationfest is) on the eastern edge of Washington, then we booked it through Oregon and got to Ontario, Idaho for supper. We were looking for a KFC but had to settle for Chester’s, which was still tasty. I also managed to snag a few nice pictures of a very pretty sunset in Ontario, which was cool. At that point, Keltie was back in the driver’s seat and she pushed right through to Twin Falls, where we are now – totally exhausted but enjoying the trip so far. Cheers to everyone back home, hope you’re having a great time

Phil out.