We’re no strangers to Vegas. As the party city lies smack en route to Colorado, five hours in, this tends to be our go-to first night stopover. Many a time, we keep it clean and lay low in the ‘burbs. On other occasions like this one, we just can’t help ourselves. We feel the need and we feed that need to hit The Strip.
Well that made for a long next day’s drive! But just like that, we found ourselves back in our second home – Summit County, Colorado.
Much as we were taken with the view from the balcony we had from our last spot in Dillon, we felt we needed something larger than hobbit-sized. So we went to the other extreme this time in Keystone, with a ridiculously large 3-bed 3-bath property to rattle around in.
Kind of. That’s actually two houses, ours was on the right hand side. And the pool and hot tubs were for the whole residential area, not just us.
Ironically, the September weather on the whole was better than in July/August. Dryer anyway. We spent much of our weekends cycling the many miles of bike paths in the area.
And it is written, any and all good bike rides deserve to be followed by beer…
And then, who’d have thought it, an Oktoberfest festival right on our doorstep in Keystone. Bring out your steins and your lederhosen. Bring out your accordion and get up, get on down to the chicken dance. Otherwise known as the birdy song. Yes really.
Back to reality and the working week, which was at least broken up by the 15 mile ride in. Virtually all bike path with the odd super quiet road, I couldn’t imagine a better commute than this. We took it in turns to ride and drive.
It’s not all cycling you know. We fit a few hikes in too. Up the steep AF trail to Mount Royal, with its breathtaking views down to the town of Frisco. And up Loveland Pass to the Continental Divide.
When we fancied a change of scenery and a change of brewery, we hit up the town of Boulder, just a couple of hours drive away. We missed our Basecamp, especially for little overnight trips, but we found the next best thing.
Another reason to go to Boulder is to fill your face at Voodoo Donuts. They of ”Good things come in pink boxes”. It has to be said, the Americans like their donuts. And the Americans certainly know how to do donuts. And these are no ordinary donuts.
Their signature Voodoo Doll donut is loosely figure shaped, loaded with chocolate icing and bears a scary monster face in a grimace. It has a kiss of death pretzel bludgeon thrust into its body. And the best bit – when you bite into it, blood-like raspberry jam comes oozing out. The Maple Bacon Bar donut was another hit, slathered in sticky maple syrup icing and topped with a rasher of crispy bacon. I could go on. But to be done with it, we took a baker’s dozen back to the EVO3 co-working office. As you can imagine, we were pretty popular that day!
Inevitably as we reached mid-September, the weather was starting to turn and the temperature was starting to drop. I could barely contain my excitement. Far from the ominous threat of ’winter is coming’, this was the sign I’d been waiting for – me and the trees both – that ’autumn is coming’. The emerald green mountainsides would soon be deluged in golden yellow and I was like a kid counting down to Christmas.
In the meantime, we embraced the oncoming seasonal transformation with pumpkin spiced lattes and cozy nights in, snuggled up by the fire.
