Monday, June 6, 2011

An Excellent Staycation

Last week Shawn, my best friend from college, his wife Amy and their 22 year old daughter Brittany (whom I used to babysit) came to visit for 10 days.  We had a great visit, and did some super fun stuff like playing tag with Amy's nieces and nephews at the park and white water rafting, as well as some less fun stuff like going to a the town's "Frontier Days", which involves walking a couple miles up and down the street looking at products that you wouldn't consider buying at a garage sale that are being hawked by a seemingly enless line of vendors.  It was interesting, however, to see how many different styles of clothing, tatoos and piercings there are.  Speaking of which, Shawn and I spotted a place (not at the Frontier Days) that advertised 200 free tatoos, leaving us wondering just how good a free tatoo is, and who would want to put a permanent mark on their body that falls under that category.

We also did some cool stuff like take a train through the Royal Gorge, which is a thousand foot deep canyon, and we ate a lot of Yo-Yogurt.  This restaurant offers the consumer the ability to choose from a variety of flavors of yogurt and multiple toppings and charges by the ounce.  It quickly became Shawn's favorite place to eat.  He was even talking about opening a franchise, until we looked it up online and discovered the suggested capital available to start one is a cool $300K.  After that Shawn was content with just enjoying their excellent product.

Unfortunately Shawn and I never got in our pre-dawn hike up the Incline that we wanted to do, but we did get to watch cliff divers inside a Mexican restaurant in Denver, and eat chicken that was raised and slaughtered in Amy's brother's backyard.  We missed the killing but according to Brittany it was something she won't be able to wash from her mind soon enough.

Finally the time came for my friends to go back home, and I said good bye to them and Amy's family.  I think the youngest three kids (aged 9, 11, and 13) adopted me as their older brother.  We had a lot of fun together, especially on the trampoline and rope swing in the backyard.  Needless to say it was a sad occassion, but a great vacation!  Now if I could just get some rest.