Becoming a Real Colorado Girl

I live in Colorado.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of this reality. Mostly when I talk to someone from home and they get excited to hear about how awesome it is living in Colorado. The truth is, every day isn't a new outdoor adventure. I spend most of my time on a college campus in the middle of town and can't even SEE the mountains, but I CAN smell the cows!

Once I began to realize this, I decided I needed to take advantage of living here.  The real question then becomes, what is unique to living in Colorado? This weekend Leanne, a first year missionary in Fort Collins, and I decided to find out and be real Colorado girls.

First, swing dancing at a rodeo steakhouse called the Sundance. We slapped on some boots and spent the evening doing some country swing. Believe it or not the whole place was packed with young people and we had to fight for space on the dance floor all night!

In the morning, we got up and went to Mass before meeting up with some students, grabbing breakfast burritos (definitely a huge Colorado thing!) and doughnuts, and heading out to do some cliff jumping! We hopped in the car, drove to the edge of the mountains and hiked in to the river. We found a place where it dropped off as a waterfall and jumped in! It was soooo cold! The minute you got in, you were practically numb. It had been dry lately so the river was pretty low and we couldn't jump from very high. Instead, we decided to explore and see if we could swim behind the waterfall. It was a cold journey swimming along the rocks to stay out of the current, but we got there! We hung out there for a little while and once we decided we'd been in the cold water long enough, got out and laid on the warm rocks in the sun to dry off. I'm not going to mention the huge rock spider that I thought was going to eat me.

On the way back to town, we stopped at The Dam Store, one of the best known tourist gift shops around. Can't go wrong with t-shirts for $5 and postcards and huckleberry chocolates! For lunch, we met one of the student's priest friend at a $1.50/scoop chinese place. Turns out he is the youngest priest in the Diocese right now. Pretty neat!

After all that adventure, Leanne and I decided to walk around Old Town in Fort Collins. There is so much going on with the unique little shops, restaurants, microbreweries, and live music out on the streets. They have painted pianos randomly placed all over and Leanne gave me a mini concert before I left! Now, time to celebrate a student's 21st birthday the Catholic way - with lots of friends, food and moderation :)