Colorado has definitely been the favorite point so far on the trip. Denver was great with the Zoo and the very warm reception at the holiday inn (which was significantly nicer than any other HI we've stayed at thus far).

The Rocky Mountains were awe-inspiring, especially how they just rose up out of the great plains as we approached from the east. We did some hiking near Bear Lake inside the park and also drove the Trail Ridge Road which goes up to the top of some of the mountains above the tree line where the climate changes to alpine tundra. We stopped at the top at the visitor's center for some hot chocolate. There are some great videos and photos of the park if you follow the links at the top of the page.

From 2009 Road Trip: May 28 (Denver, CO to Beaver Creek, CO and Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park)

Our hotel that night was in Beaver Creek, a resort town nestled in a valley a couple miles down the road from Vail. Although summer is the off season, we really liked the town and the hotel was nice. We got there just as the hotel restaurant was closing for the night and they stayed to make us dinner even though we were the only ones in the restaurant...on top of that they gave us free drinks!

Yesterday was a relaxing day where we had a short 2 hour drive from Beaver Creek down to Grand Junction before touring Colorado National Monument where we took some stunning pictures.

We're in Grand Junction, CO right now and the terrain has changed from the forest covered rocky mountains to arid mesas as we move closer to the desert. We are very late leaving the hotel this morning -- we had planned to leave at 7:30 but its now 10 AM. We may end up skipping Arches National Park today on the way to Salt Lake City because we were hoping to have enough time to walk around downtown before the sun goes down and its at least a 5 hour drive away from here.

From 2009 Road Trip: May 29 (Beaver Creek, CO to Grand Junction, CO and Colorado Nat'l Monument)

A few technical notes:

Apparently, Picasa has a limit of 500 pictures per album, so I've broken the pictures down into a gallery for each day.

I also added a link for videos that we've taken. For some reason the 2 minute video from our drive through the Rockies is showing up as low quality. I'll try and get it to display in HD like the other videos later on when I get a chance.

It's been a long couple of days but the long stretch across to Denver is complete. The first day we drove from Blacksburg, VA to St. Louis, MO. It was pouring with rain for most of the way including our arrival around 9 PM in St. Louis. The Hyatt we stayed and our reservation request for a high floor and direct view of the Arch were met with a 12th floor corner room right across the street from the Arch.

The next day was another long haul across all of Missouri and most of Kansas to Hays, where Wild Bill Hickok was once sheriff, but the only attraction for us was the Hampton Inn. It was pouring with rain the entire day and had a hard time finding the hotel even though it was right off the interstate. That resulted in us seeing a lot more of the town than we had expected and both agreed it looked pretty nice actually.

Yesterday we had a relatively short drive from Hays to Denver, where I'm writing this entry from. We left Hays around 9 AM central time and arrived in Denver around 2 PM mountain time. We spent the next 3-4 hours at the Denver Zoo -- the first Zoo that Tawana had ever been to. We saw lots of cool attractions - tigers, giraffes, polar bears, etc. - but sadly the elephants were inside when we got to the exhibit for staff to clean the area and leave food out for them. While we were waiting for the staff to finish and elephants to come back out, Tawana realized she had left her iphone in the bathroom several hours prior when we first got to the Zoo. Upon realizing it, we rushed back to the entrance, passing the Cheetahs along the way before getting to the security desk...fortunately someone had turned the phone in to lost and found and disaster was averted.

Our hotel for the night was a Holiday Inn Express in western Denver and it has been a very nice stay. The night was free for starters using points and there was a great Manager's reception when we arrived with unlimited beer and food which we took advantage of. It was after about the 3rd beer that I remembered my father's advice about the impact of alcohol being much stronger in Denver because of the high altitude. Shortly after we retired to our room and went to bed fairly tired after walking around the Zoo for four hours.

Just a note: Even though we're not posting updates every day, we are doing our best to keep the map and photos section updated on a daily basis, so you can see all 400+ of our pictures in the Photos section.

A very overdue update for the past two days....the days have been busy and each night we've been exhausted and headed straight to bed. I'll pick up where we left off in Brunswick, GA.

Jekyll Island

We were so tired from the night before that we failed to wake up at 5:45 to make it to Jekyll Island in time to see the sunrise. Instead we arrived around 7:45 (the time we were originally planning to leave). We ended up spending 2 hours on the island including a walk along Driftwood Beach and a drive through the historic district where J.P. Morgan and others used to vacation and where the Federal Reserve was created in the early 1900s. There are dozens of pictures we took in the Photos section of the site, along with this short video of the beach...still as peaceful and unspoiled as when I had visited it 15 years or so prior.



After Jekyll Island, we started heading up I-95 north towards Savannah and Charleston. For most of the way it was pouring with rain.



Because of the pouring rain and being several hours late out of Jekyll Island, we decided to not stop in Savannah and Charleston. As we moved north and approached Charlotte though, the sun came out.



Shortly after getting through the Charlotte traffic, we pulled into a rest area and put down the top for the rest of the way up to Virginia.



We arrived in Virginia around 8 and had a great dinner with the grill. Being very tired from the long day, we both went to bed shortly after we finished dinner around 10:30.

Virginia

The following morning we headed off to spend the day at Claytor Lake. We stopped along the way at a Walmart, which definitely was a highlight of the stay in Virginia and Tawana's first trip ever to one. We stocked up on lots of supplies here, from an extra bag for all the things we'd shipped to VA to a cooler for the car. After that, we were off to the Lake.



We stopped at a place on the side of the lake to pick up some lunch which we took back out to the middle of the lake to eat, then decided to try our time honored tradition of casting fishing lures into the water for several hours in the futile hope that a fish might bite them.



As we lost ourselves to our own thoughts and the tranquility of the lake, time flew by and before we noticed, it was past six and had to head back to the dock to head home for dinner and bed for the long day we have tomorrow. We did manage to take a quick walk around the neighborhood before dinner which gave us a chance to snap some pictures of the sunset over the fields which border their subdivision. which I'll finish this post with before heading to bed in preparation of the long day ahead of us tomorrow. The picture count is now over 100, you can find them all by clicking the Photos link at the top!

A quick update for everyone...it will be brief because the hotel I'm staying in doesn't have wifi and I forgot to bring an ethernet cable -- currently connecting through my phone and down here in Georgia, 3G has not yet been discovered.

After some delays, and much stressing on my part, we arrived in Tallahassee around 6 PM, about an hour later than expected. When we reached the car rental place, we had the choice of two convertibles, as expected: The Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder or the Chrysler Sebring. After further discovery, it became apparent that it would be hard to fit my laptop bag into the trunk of the Spyder...let alone any suitcases or other bags. I also was not a fan of the Spyder's color...a kind of blue-green color you'd expect to see if someone left fruit out on their desk for too long.

I do, however, owe an apology to Margaret Thatcher as the Sebring available caught both our eyes in a deep shade of red, and we chose that (pictures to follow soon). The name decision is up in the air...we may wait to see what fits.

We arrived at our hotel in Georgia a little past 11 PM. The drive was not bad except for intermittant showers which forced us to wait until another day to put the top down on the car. That being said, it has been a long day and tomorrow will be another long day, so I will sign off for now, but expect a new update with the first pictures from the trip tomorrow night from Virginia.

As the day gets closer, one of the big unknowns for us is who Gracie will be. Grace Park, of course, is the name of the car we will be renting...but we'll call her Gracie for short. Our reservation guarantees us a convertible, but no specific models. The potential models that they stock are Ford Mustangs, Chrysler Sebrings, and Mitsubishi Spyder Eclipses. As of Tuesday, they only had Sebrings and Spyders on the lot...though there was a chance that the distribution would change before we arrive Friday night.

Finally, the first real post! With five days to go before we leave on the trip, there's still lots of work to do. At this point, reservations have been made up until Arizona. The rest will be booked after we've been on the road a couple days to get a feel of how far we can comfortably go in a day.