And So it Begins, our Colorado Adventure

Keri picked Bonnie and me up at the airport bright and early.  We needed to pick up our race packets but the expo wasn't open.  Keri had a plan.  We headed to the capital building.  See the top of the building in gold.  We took the trek up there!

This is one of those "had to be there" situations.  It was so beautiful inside and built a long time ago. The architecture was amazing and to think that the people that built it didn't have what we have to use to build buildings.  The round structures were all over.  They were part of the heating system.  More to come on that.

 This is a picture of the inside of the gold dome from the ground floor.

Lots of murals on the walls depicting different times in the history of Colorado.

A tapestry.  As you can see it is very large and it depicts some of the important women in the history of Colorado.

Here is a view from the large round structures looking to the grates on the floor.  The heat from below the grate would rise up through the big holes in each level and heat the building.

This horse, Scout, was a gift to the governor.  I believe this is the governors office.

So much artwork.

I am trying to remember what each of the rooms are.  I do believe this is one that used to be in use but is no longer used for government functions.

This chandelier weighs 2,000 pounds and is cleaned once a year.

This is the House.  This chandelier is 1,700 pounds.  Amazing but true.

The Senate also with a huge chandelier!

Portraits of all of the presidents of the United States reside in this area!

Getting closer to traveling up into the dome!

To get to the dome we had to climb 91 stairs.  The stairs wound up to the top of the building and we had to walk single file to climb them.  I thought about taking a picture once and I decided holding the handrails was a better choice.  The view from the top!

Keri, Jackie, Bonnie!

The top of the dome was still pretty far away. This was as close as we got.

There was a museum in this area too.  

And we found John Denver!!  Nice!

The seal of Colorado was on each and every door knob in the capital building!

And here we are! One mile above sea level.  We were trying to get a picture and a class on a field trip wanted to be a mile high too.  They kindly moved to the side for our picture.

Packet pick-up time.

Bonnie spotted this booth!  We both investigated it.  We were told the purpose of the marijuana was not to get high but for only medicinal purposes.  OK!

Another gimmick.  Lay on these pads and all will be healed!

Let the games begin!  We got back to Keri's and the competition started.  First darts.  Easton and I were a team.  We did not win!

Bonnie and Ryland did a lot better!  Keri played on a team of her own!

Lots of creepy stuff around their house!  Dead guys.

Ping pong next!  That was fun for sure.  It had been a long time since I had batted a ping pong ball.

Celebrating a point!

More creepy things!  The Doolittles know how to do Halloween!

One more game.  It is called 10,000! It is a dice game and I don't remember the rules but it was fun!

The game face!  Time to call it a night.  Tomorrow brings a family race day!

We Tried to Take the Road Less Traveled

Beautiful day for a hike in the mountains.  The Wild Moose Chase Trail Run.  Our leg started at 10:30.  We had never done this so didn't know about parking, location, etc. We wanted to make sure we had plenty of time before the race started.  We arrived about 45 minutes early.  It was a bit chilly and we immediately started trying to figure out a way to start early. Maybe with another leg of the race?  We would be warm if we started immediately. 

First things first.  We found the outhouse and used it.   You always have to that you know.

What a day.  Fall colors popping out.  A lone chair lift.  Maybe it was part of the ski area at Mount Spokane at one time.  Or maybe a sledding hill.

We went into the lodge where a fire was burning and it was toasty warm.

Well, I guess we didn't have to use the outhouse.  That was a bummer discovering this.  Rookie mistake.

OK, let's check things out.  The start line and the finish line for everyone was the same but where were the routes for the different lengths.  We did not want to get on the 25K path for sure.  Maybe we could just walk past these people and start.  Was that the right way?

We notice the group before us going down this area. No ambulance rides please.  We decided to check it out.  We started walking and they were all long gone.

Maybe they went this way.  We were supposed to follow the orange markers for the 5K.  We walked.

Sheila started her Apple Watch.  We kept walking, then turned around and headed a different way.  We saw arrows on the ground and we followed them but no orange markers.  We finally talked to someone and we were going the wrong direction for our distance.  Well, at least we got some more steps in.  We headed back to the lodge.

Got our together picture taken.

And it was almost 10:30.  That didn't work out very well.

Here we go with the rest of the 5K people.  It was a good effort but unsuccessful.

What a beautiful day.  The chill of fall was in the air!

Some trails were plenty wide and some more narrow.

I snapped lots of pictures of the scenery.

This one is my favorite.

I mentioned  to Sheila that I thought we went uphill more than downhill.  One thing about trail runs in the mountains they have hills.

These mean boys told us we could not go up the big hill behind them.  It doesn't look that big but it was.  They said no way.  We really wanted to climb it but we weren't allowed to.  We were so disappointed.  It was toward the end of the trail run.  It would have been a great challenge.  Darn!  Haha!

Arrows made of flour, no harm to the environment.

We are done!  We actually found the moose! He looks sort of funny though.  Standing on two legs?  He is red.  What's that about?

The end! Another adventure in the books.  God is good, Got is good, all the time!