Denver area,
Colorado,
United States
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Our last day in Summit County we spent washing our stinky backpacking clothes, uploading music to the MP3 player we will travel with (thanks Big Mike!), and other uninteresting chores along those lines. In the evening, we said goodbye to Julenne and met up with Keystone Science School folks for dinner at the Dillon Dam Brewery, then headed down to Longmont to stay at Adam and Lauren's house. The next day we did some last minute errands like a run to REI (thanks Lara!) and met up with Jodi and Jeremy in Loveland for an afternoon beer/coffee. From there we continued up to Fort Collins for a delicious dinner, dessert, and Pisco sours with Dave (Casey's co-leader on the Global Explorers trip to Peru), Gina (his wife), and Beth (Global Explorers coordinator). Then came "the final pack" which turned into an all-day process of shoving the remaining chaos of our lives into Adam's garage, figuring out exactly which four shirts would be the chosen ones for the trip, and lastly puzzle-piece packing our backpacks to the brim. We are a bit weighed down (48 pound packs each) with camping gear, but expect that the extra burden will pay off in money saved on hotel rooms in the end. We even managed to fit in snorkel gear (fins included!) so we won't have to rent it over and over. Eric, Julie, and their two boys Sam and Cole, met up with us in Longmont and along with Adam, Lauren, and Avery, we all went out to dinner at Johnny Carino's. From there, we hung out at Eric and Julie's for a bit, then Eric kindly drove us to the airport for our red-eye (literally my were quite bloodshot when we arrived at JFK) flight that left at 1 AM.
