Denver Trip

Last weekend was a trip to Denver with Angela to go see one of her long time friends get married. We left early (~7:30) on Friday and arrived at our hotel at around 2:30 with only a stop for Dairy Queen along the way. We rested for a bit before heading out to a concert.

The concert was Blake Shelton at the Grizzly Rose. We were told to get there early because it would be a full house. Here is the schedule they had:
6:00 Doors open
8:00 Opening band
10:00 Blake Shelton

Well we arrived at about 5:20 with a few cars in the lot and a few people in line at the door. We sat in the car far a bit and walked to the door at around 5:45. Blake Shelton was there in the parking lot playing catch football with his setup crew and band. at 6 we went in and sat and ordered some food-which by the way I believe was directed toward the people that are to drunk to taste their food. They had music playing loudly and by 7 or 7:30 there were a bunch of line dancers out on the floor.

At 8 the opening band came out I think they were local, he sang most of the popular songs, although there were a few he should not have. At about 8:30 he started asking if everyone was ready for Blake between each song-this really started to piss me off after about the third or fourth time. His music resulted in a lot more line dancers, one of which was a goth girl. WTF??

So, finally at 10:00 Blake comes on. Mind you, we could have walked in at this point and been better of then we were, because now we were half deaf and tired. The crowd got larger-more line dancing-more other dancing-more women screaming at the front of the stage...Lets turn the sound up some more... We enjoyed the music and danced some (not line) and saw a women throw up on the edge of the dance floor. When we left ~11:30 both of us had ringing in our ears and were dead tired. -->hotel-->bed. I don't think we will be doing that again.

Saturday we got up-continental breakfast (quite a good one too)-took off to go visit Angela's Aunt and Uncle and cousins. We were there through lunch talking about all the goings on (she hadn't seen them in ~10 years). After that was a quick stop at the mall and then a rush to get ready for the wedding and get there on time-which we did.

It was at the Phipp's Mansion-very nice- that is owned by the University of Denver (?). It was a beautiful wedding.

The next morning we decided to leave early to go to Colorado Springs to do some sight seeing. We ended up going to the Miramont Castle. It was pretty cool, built in the late 1800's by a French Priest. The lady at the reception desk was all about the ghosts in the castle, apparently they appear in photos all the time as orbs (read: like lens flare (sp?)). I did have an orb in 2 photos, but not enough to make me believe anything (see to the left, center of picture).

After we were done at the castle it was food time. We went to a place called Old Chicago, it was a recommendation of one of the other wedding guests. We had some pepperoni rolls and split a calzone (it came as 2 smaller ones, but still plenty for each of us) and finished off with a giant cookie ala mode. It was a great meal, and the price was good too. We then headed home, and got back to Abq about 8:30 and returned our rental car and that was it.

By the way, Rental Car: 2007 Hyundai Elantra-Full power, Sunroof, CD, XM(no subscription of course), MP3 player and I-Pod port, Auto (will they ever rent a stick car here?), the best part was the trip average 38 mpg-given the car was no powerhouse, it had a low good starting first gear with a big jump to second that killed any acceleration you were doing. Anyway that was the trip, and the longest blog so far I think...there are still some pictures to come.