The Return to Estes Park

We returned to Estes Park, Colorado last week and met up with my wife's entire family (less one niece who was out of the country). On the way there we went through the Black Hills and visited the Mammoth Site. The fossils weren't necessarily exciting alone, but the story of how they got there was fascinating.

In Colorado, I went fly fishing for the first time. I hooked 11 trout and landed 7 of them. Six of the 7 looked like this.

But this 18" Rainbow Trout (the guide's estimate, not mine) sure was fun to catch.

The next day I did the "zip line", which sounded fairly benign when I was originally asked whether I wanted to participate. I was somewhat taken aback when I showed up and found out that I was going to have to ascend to a small platform about 20 feet up a pole, and then descend a giant hill on a wire for about 300 yards at about 100 feet at its maximum distance from the ground. And although it was daunting to go down the hill from high in the air, it was nothing compared to walking back up that hill in the thin mountain air. I think that it took me 20 minutes to recover my breath.

Later in the week I paid an exorbitant amount ($3) to spend an hour at the archery range. The truth is it ended up being even more expensive than that, as I have decided to construct my own archery range on our property in some dead space behind our back fence.

When it was over, we decided to power home in a single day during which I did all of the driving. We stopped only 3 times, once in Omaha for take-out at my wife's favorite Omaha restaurant.

Arriving home a bit past midnight, we found 3 dogs and a cat who all feigned excitement regarding our return.

All in all, it was a very nice week.