i went to colorado twice and all i got to show for it is a scraped knee
pete wentz kind of cooked with this style of title and recognizing it as fall out boy-esque. but just kidding i actually have a lot to show.
i mentioned in my post about my trip to canada about how i almost got stuck in denver because of amtrak. i don't really think i ever told anyone about it, because 2022 was a crazy year for me.
anyways there are a few pieces of information needed. a good writer would explain this, naturally. mise en scene and all of that. but,, bro yall ever hear of bullet points??
- 2022 railroad strike
- kikagaku moyo was a band. they are on hiatus but i dont know if that means a one direction hiatus or a kpop military hiatus. at the time of announcing their hiatus there were no bay area shows (there was after i planned this trip though...)
- 2024 we went to see king gizzard and the lizzard wizard (not on hiatus and still releasing music at a speed that i dont think anyone can rival) because it was about the same price to fly to colorado, pay for two nights at a hotel, the bus to red rocks, and the concert ticket, than it was to see them locally.
anyways in 2022 we planned to go to rocky mountain national park because i had a national parks pass that year from doing a road trip (which would probably also be good to blog about...)
estes park is a nice little mountain town. we just walked around. theres the hotel that the shining is based on. we didn't go there but it feels worth mentioning.
there are two entrances to the park. day 1 was going to be the more strenuous day because we had a full day there. the next day were were going to drive back to denver.
we hiked to sky pond. great hike but the altitude got to me. (im spoiled and nick carries the water for me when we hike, as boyfriends should) i like to hike early and then do something else in the day.
there is this place in estes park that you can ride an "alpine roller coaster" omg. please go. i dont even like roller coasters. i took a video but nothing is in frame and its us just laughing. one of those videos that only nick and i would enjoy to be honest.
okay, i need to take a break from photos to actually explain that the reason i don't have a lot of photos is because they are all portrait, and also they are all 16x9. i dont know what was up with me. i also didnt realize until april 2024 when finally looking at photos on a screen, and i shoot jpeg only so theres really no saving me. so please,,, know i can do better.
for day 2 we wanted something less strenuous after the hike we did yesterday. i don't know or remember what this hike was called, or even the trailhead.
please note all these rocks.
not to be that person, but the Rocky Mountain National Park is kind of rocky. i mean it in the way that the rocky mountains are definitely different than the sierras that i'm used to hiking in (is that okay? does that make this statement less embarrassing than "rocky mountain is rocky lol")
so i'm not fast at hiking because i like to stop and take pictures and point at things. i typically dictate speed. well nick wanted to. and i told him to be careful because its rocky, and he was wearing sandals. he's jumpin around, walking all confident, then he rolls his ankle. i didn't say "i told you so" but man,, i was thinking it. luckily were close to the car, so he can hobble back. i asked him if he wanted to go to a ranger station to ask for an ice pack and he said no. and i swear there was NO ONE on this hike, and the only time we saw probably the only other two asian people in colorado and the only people on this hike is when he loudly yelled "FUCK" when he hurt himself.
i have a photo sequence of the marmot walking up to my car and if i ever care enough i'm going to make a gif. we keep driving around the park on a road i remember being special but i can't remember the name. and eventually make it to a ranger station. i ask for an ice pack. it revives him (i told him so this time)
we get to our hotel in denver, i take the ice from the ice machine and we continue to ice his ankle and i gave him advil.
we spent the day in boulder. boulder has such a college town vibe. i have one complaint about colorado. any time we(nick) would talk to people and we(nick) would be like "hey whats good to eat around here" people would only recommend us alcohol. like "oh if you want a good margarita you should go here" "they do a really good beer flight" okay thanks!!! i didnt know the state of colorado recognizes alcohol as food. we were killing time waiting for the concert that "post dinner pre concert" time. nick says that his ankle feels better and maybe he will go on a run tomorrow, and then says "see" to show me his super swollen ankle. i started laughing, i text my parents this picture who also laugh at him. we were near a walgreens and we get him an ankle brace and a different pair of socks.
they put on a great show despite how boring this pic looks.
we went to meow wolf, and i know its like some of the most photogenic shit you can do so i should post better pics. i think we finished the story line in 4 hours? i wanted to stay longer to look at stuff but nicks ankle hurt, and hes a trooper for even doing it with me lol
i think i forgot how i ranked them. despite omega mart being the first one i went to, house of eternal return i think is my favorite. its charming, and you see the idea and visiting other locations you can see the growth. there is a lot to see in convergence station, everything feels more polished. i know there are some open in texas, so eventually i should go to those...
we went earlier for the show in denver, because there were a few chairs, and i know nick needed to sit. here are more exciting pics of them.
at this point i think i already knew of the railroad workers strike. i was not relaxed. i was texting my parents to ask if they were able to get us from an airport if needed. i was looking up rental cars just as a worse case scenario that we may have to drive back to california. when i'm in a Bad Mood no one is making me feel better other than myself, but man does nick try. luckily it all worked out.
i took far too many pictures on amtrak. so i went from denver to richmond (CA) and just transferred to bart and got picked up by my brother. we ended up arriving on time. and i know people in the northeast take amtrak but its different out west. i don't know anyone who took amtrak. and i actually know some people that never even left the state of california.
mariahs amtrak review
- want to bring drugs? weapons? more than 100mL? amtrak is the way
- observation car is great! except people don't really get up from their seats. the windows are big enough at your seat that you don't really feel like you're missing out.
- observation car is also hot because its all window. (we bought a sprite cuz i saw someone else drinking it and i dont know how much it cost but i know it was worth it)
- we didn't get a room. it was just 1 night. if i were alone, as a woman, i would get a room. to elaborate, some guy kept staring at me, like every single time i saw him he was looking at me. and when we got on the train two old guys kept sitting in our seat. they tried to convince us to just take theirs and i said no (i am always the bad cop, nick is the good cop) if we got up to go to the observation car when i would come back they would be sitting in our chairs. i do not know why.
- take your fresh air breaks!!!!!!!! once you're behind schedule they will cut them out to make it on time.
- bathrooms are way bigger than planes and they feel the same level of dirty. except people kept forgetting to flush the toilet.
- sleeping in a chair is not that hard because there is a bunch of leg room and foot rests. nick took the aisle at night because i was scared of that guy lol. i can also sleep anywhere, which is probably the biggest reason i felt this was okay. if it was 2 nights, id get a room.
- we went to a grocery store before we left and just bought some snacks for the ride. we didn't get access to the meals because we didn't have a room. (i think we bought cup noodles. if i smell cup noodles, i need to eat one) and during one of the stops there was a store that sold sandwiches and i got that for us. at stops they will tell you ahead of time and how much time you have to buy stuff.
- water was okay. it had a taste but i hate paying for water, so it was fine enough for that.
the seats. nick and i are pretty light packers. my bag is 30L and his was 45L. the extra two bags are mine, with our wallets, cameras, chargers, and anything we may want without digging in our bags for. and then a secondary bag with records that we bought and snacks. our bags went above our head and the other two stayed on the floor with us.
i'm going to limit it to just these pics but there is one of someone mooning us that i want to add. i would do one of these rides again. i dont know how it would be alone, but we got a lot done. i bought several books in colorado that i read, and i also journaled. so i passed the time easily.
i want to take amtrak to reno in the winter to see everything covered in snow.
bonus trip to colorado!!
i actually just want to put this here, because ,,,, its short enough and old enough that i'll never talk about it on its own.
post title namesake inury, 2024. corner in RiNo area of Denver, Colorado
we landed, went to get coffee, i ate shit. nick felt bad because he didnt catch me, he thought "it was a bit" i have never fallen in front of him. i fell in slow motion i guess. i had my camera in my pocket so i fell awkwardly because i didn't want to land on my camera. then i sort of got up slowly because i didn't know where i spilled my coffee. there were no stores we could buy bandaids. i cleaned out the hotel and took theirs though. we were really only there for one full day and had no plans.
king gizzard. i can say nick is the king gizzard fan. i'm here for support. i like some of their albums, but not all of them. i like some of the guys other works. its all very vague on purpose. but we saw king gizzard before at coachella (which i had to choose between badbadnotgood and king gizzard, painful). i can't even explain the genre because they make all different kinds of music. just give them a listen.
red rocks as a venue is sooo cool. i need to go to the gorge now.
i have no fun pics from this trip because its painful to walk around with a knee that was constantly bleeding. and it kept bleeding because we kept moving. we kept it low key and just ate and relaxed. i feel embarrassed to post food pics.
but we kind of laughed that the first time we go to colorado he gets injured, then the next time we go i lightly injure myself.
anyways, bye!!!