Colorado

Next stop, Boulder, Colorado and more friends to stay with, Drew and Erin who we met on a trek in Patagonia. We took the Amtrak, infact I started writing this on that journey. It took about 22hours but the train was fantastic, loads of leg room and a lounge carriage mostly made of glass with great views. We arrived in Denver and by chance saw the start of the 'stock festival', which is mostly just country folk either on horseback or walking cattle and shouting 'yeeeeehaaaaaa' but the locals seem to like it.

We headed to Boulder, a uni town, and spent a few days chilling with Drew and Erin, went cycling on the towns excellent bike trails and then last Saturday went snowboarding. We both took to it really well and Drew said I was a natural just before I fell over and hurt my back. Boulder is right on the edge of the Rockie Mountains, and there are some amazing places to stay up there but your talking 50quid a night minimum, so I decided to email a couple of places and ask 'do you need a hand with anything in exchange for food and a bed'. And so we ended up here http://www.allensparklodge.com/ which is where Im finishing this email, its a beautiful log cabin with hot tub and right now its snowing heavily outside. The owners Bill and Juanita are brilliant, we do very little here and we get alot in return. On Wednesday we went snow shoeing in the national park, in places there were 4ft of snow, in others there were 400ft drops and Kerry cried as she started to slide towards such a drop.
This weekend we have a group 'scrap bookers' staying with us, these ladies collect lots of photos and then during this weekend they will creatively cut these photos and put them into an album, one of these ladies is now sat infront of me snoring away infront of the fire, I think all the excitement has finally taken its toll.

We had a great time with Bill and Juanita in the lodge and they were very generous. We went saw plenty of Elk roaming the streets of Estes Park and tried a beer by the same name. We also had a great day out snow shoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Our time came to return to Boulder and back to Drew and Erin's place. It was great to back with them and that following weekend we spent in the mountains at their friends place. I really loved my time in Boulder its my kind of place. In the town itself there are miles of bike paths separate from roads and it makes getting around, excercising and walking a real pleasure. This definately helps keep the weight off the locals in this already active town and the traffic off the roads too.

On our last night out in Boulder we hit the town and finished in what the locals called a 'dive bar', needless to say it was exactly my kind of bar. We had an amazing time in Colorado thanks mainly to Drew and Erin, cheers guys, hope to repay you some day.