Skip to Content

Taking it easy-Colorado Day 2

The weather driving through 19 hours was uneventful except for a brief severe thunderstorm outside of Oklahoma City. I was checking the radar and it looked sketchy. I saw a distinctive hook and that usually sets off warning signals. Instead of second guessing whether to take shelter or keep driving, I sent a quick tweet to James Spann, our weather GENIUS, and his reply settled the matter.  We stayed put for a few minutes until it passed by.

 

For the rest of the trip, right up until the last hour, we had picture perfect weather. But that changed quickly. As I was driving into town, we kept seeing these amazing storm clouds and shelf clouds. Then after the sun set behind the mountains, the lightning storms were huge and slow moving.

 clouds

After we got to the hotel, I checked the weather and was shocked to hear about the hail and rain flooding.  This happened about an hour before we got there. That is rain flooding and about a foot of hail on top. Some people had hail in the backyard up to their knees. This is extreme weather!

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/09/article-2156717-13849746000005DC-744_634x379.jpg

We got checked in and crashed immediately. We had a sunrise to look forward to.

But of course, we missed it. I slept late for me, until about 7:30. The sun was well up and dancing over Pike’s Peak. We took our time getting ready for the day and grabbing some breakfast. I got some breakfast casserole and sausage from the hot bar. I saved the fruit for later.

wfpikes breakfast

We spent the afternoon grabbing some stuff from REI, like compression socks. I’m officially and old lady now. All I need is perfume that smells like bug spray. It seems that driving/riding for so long and enjoying way too many Smokehouse almonds caused my feet to swell to Troll size, minus the hairy toes. They were HUGE. So, I drank a lot of water and bought some nifty black compression socks that will double as the trendy knee length CrossFit socks that Bob Harper parades around in on the set of Biggest Loser.

Then it was time to drive to the summit of Pikes and try to get acclimated as soon as possible. 14,000 ft is high. and cold. I have taken every possible picture of Pike’s for the last 3 years so this year, I got just a few.  Okay, two.

 pike1 pike2

After we walked around and had lunch at the top, he wanted to do some trout fishing. I wanted to sit by the lake and enjoy the breeze. But the bugs and stinging something bugs drove me crazy. So I went back to the jeep and watched this little guy play around.

Catamount catamount2

Day 2 was good. Easy, laid back, no rush, just enjoying the view and the weather.