Becka Travels to the Land 'O Jeeps

Well, I really shouldn't be blogging, there are plenty of other things I need to do. However, the way it works with me is that I do everything else on my To-Do List before I get to the most pertinent and awful To-Do (grading papers). So here's a quick run down of my trip to Colorado.

I got to spend the week staying with my friend Tiffany in Fort Collins. While it was fun and inexpensive, I did have to commute and hour and a half into Denver everyday, but that's really a small price to pay for good times. The class I was taking (called Managing the NEPA Process, that's right, I can manage something now) was in the crappy, scary part of Denver. I here good things about that city, but all I got to see was traffic and puncture vines. The teacher of this course was really good (plus she's on my thesis committee, so I just like her anyways), and the people in the little groups we were split into were cool, put together that makes a four day course much better.

Back in Fort Collins we went out a couple times. Thursday we went to this Mexican restaurant called Rio Grande (I believe), and I had this amazing spinach and squash enchilada (officially Del Espinaca Enchilada). If anyone knows a recipe for this type of enchilada please let me know, it was to die for. Then we went to Sullivan's and made new friends while we played pool. Friday we also had a tasty dinner at Lucky Joe's. I must say that the restaurant selection in Fort Collins is far superior to that in Logan. So much variety, so few Chili's/Ruby Tuesdays/Appleby's. Awesome.
Saturday I decided the best thing for me to do would be to go to Rocky Mountain National Park before I came back home. I only got to spend an afternoon there, and a cold afternoon at that, but the views were freaking amazing! Plus, I saw some wildlife (elk and bighorn sheep to be exact). I can now fully endorse this park as a must see. Seriously, there are 7,000 vertical feet within the park itself. That means that everywhere you go there's a glorious view of a cliff face or river valley. Plus it has a really accessible trail system, with lots of easy and difficult hikes available from right off the main roads. The drive there is pretty gorgeous too, at least if you come from the east.

All the driving sucked a little bit. I think my butt is flatter due to all the sitting I've done. I'm also afraid that I've decided Wyoming has very little to offer the average visitor. Mostly its just windy and full of energy development (though more of the fossil fuel type than the wind type). I did see some antelope, so that was good. And I had a brief, kind of crazy conversation with a gas station clerk. But mostly I advice everyone to avoid driving through the state if at all possible (on the way back home the wind slowed me down by like a hour, that's pretty serious).

The only down side to my trip is that I spent the last week not doing any of my Logan work, and now its all piled up and stressing me out. So now I'm going to go shower, then I'll get to the grading (I hate grading, who am I to decide whether they did well or not?).