Family Visit

More wonderful thunderstorms and rain rolled across last night and today. During the heaviest rain last night, we sat out on our backyard deck, Quinn snuggled on my lap, watching the rain pour, lightning crashing in the distance, and for a while even some blueberry-sized hail splashing into the pond and bouncing onto the deck.

This post is a quick summary of the family visits we had this month. I can't guarantee that I have everything in quite the right order here, so if I apologize in advance if I get some details wrong. Details about the evening of the zombie attack have become especially hazy.

On the evening of Wednesday, June 19th, my parents arrived to spend a few days with us; we were glad they decided to stay.  We thought we might spend all of every day out riding three tandems, but there just wasn't time to that and anything else.

Cindy had to work on the 20th, so once we got through with breakfast and some tinkering with online homework, the five of us headed off to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. Despite the broiling Colorado sun and near 100-degree temps, we really enjoyed exploring all the trains at the Railroad Museum.  It's a huge place, with a huge assortment of train cars and engines spanning the rail history of Colorado.

After a day in the sun we went home, ate some yummy tacos with Cindy and Sharon, and took some bikes out to explore the Cherry Creek Reservoir trails near our house.

Friday, June 21st, we took the bikes out for a longer ride on the Cherry Creek Trail. We rode from our house out to the Cherry Creek Dam and down to the dam outlet where the trail turns and follows Cherry Creek all the way through Denver to its confluence with the Platte Check out the Garmin log from our route here.

The next day, Saturday, we explored Denver by taking the light rail from the station nearest our house into the city. No pics of that to share, but our rail trip pretty much followed the same as route as the previous days bicycling, taking us in to the 16th Street Mall and REI at the confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek rivers. Quinn made an awesome climb up the Pinnacle at REI; I should have gotten some pictures of that! Later in the afternoon, we met up with Laurie who was in Denver for a big conference and we all rode the rail back to our end of town.

Sunday morning with started out with a trip to the Lookout Mountain Nature Center near Golden and walked the short trail through the surrounding meadow. It was very nice, if a little hot.

 After Lookout Mountain, we drove down the hill to into Golden on north to Boulder where we spent some time driving around looking for somewhere park in the vicinity of Chatauqua Park. That didn't work out so well so we went on up the hill and found a pull-off where we could park and walk around a bit. It was really nice. People took pictures of us.

And then it was the Pearl Street Mall and then dinner with Bob and BJ at a Spanish/Italian restaurant near their house, after which we drove home in the most monstrous thunderstorm we'd seen in years.

I've been trying to get this blog written up for weeks now, so if it seems like I'm hurrying -- well, it's because I am!

My parents left Monday and morning. Once they were on their way, we headed to the zoo with Laurie. We bracketed the zoo trip with a coffee shop visit on the front end and a trip to the Torta Grill afterward. It was a good visit to the zoo, as usual, but the Torta Grill was most memorable!! We almost passed up the Torta Grill because it was such a small place with minimal seating right along Colfax Ave, but we were glad we didn't. We sat by the curb on plastic chairs at a plastic table and ate giant tortas that were more delicious than we could ever have imagined.