1st Year Anniversary

We did it!  One year!  So much has happened between then and now, seems like a long time ago that we had all our friends and family come out to Bonny Doon for our wedding.

What did we do for our anniversary?  We are still trying to figure it out.  We found a deal on LivingSocial for a 2 night stay in La Veta.  Never heard of it.  In fact, no one we know from Colorado had ever heard of it.  And, there's a reason.  This place was in the middle of nowhere.  3 hours South of Denver on a forgotten highway, La Veta quietly sits at the base of the Cristo de Sangre mountain range.  
The main street was paved, side streets were dirt and deer walked around like the owned the place.

What does one do in La Veta?  There weren't really any bars or restaurants open late.  The few businesses in town just seemed to close when they felt like it.  Kinda eerie.

We arrived Friday night and Saturday morning, luckily, was one of the busier days in La Veta.  We found a fundraiser pancake breakfast, pancakes, OJ and coffee for 5 bucks each.  We joined the townspeople and were serenaded by the Orphan Valley Singers WOOOOO!

We sat down with a heaping plate of pancakes and enjoyed the company of no one under the age of 65.  

We consider ourselves old at heart anyway.  Here was the day's schedule:

Despite the much anticipated "Chicken Drop" we decided to head up the mountain to do some hiking and exploring.  If nothing else La Veta and the surrounding national park is beautiful.  

Blue Lake was beautiful and the water was an emerald green color.  What you don't see are the tons of people fishing all around the shore.  Apparently that is what you do here, fish.  We had a picnic and then left for another site.

Above: the view from Cuchara pass.  Jen reads, I take pictures.  It was a perfect day weather-wise.

Above: vista point from a hike near West Peak.

Above: coming back from West Peak, heading to the car.

Above: the wildflowers were bright and in full bloom.

After a long day of hiking and exploring we headed back to the hotel for our final night.  A word about the hotel.  When I called to check our reservation on Friday, as we were leaving, they said they had no record of it.  Despite the fact that I remember, verbatim, the conversation I had with one "Randy" about reserving a room, the same Randy was unable to locate the reservation.  When we arrived he talked fast, seemed nervous, mentioned something about putting us in the luxury suite (which never happened) and let his associate finish checkin us in.  The place was pretty funky.  The ceramic lining of our bathtub was chipped and peeling up pretty badly, they had single serve pump soap dispensers in the bathroom and when I went to pull my computer charger out of the wall, the entire socket came clear out.  I neatly put it back and went about my business.

We enjoyed champagne!

My beautiful wife busted it out.

            

Above: not realizing that pressure had built in the bottle as we ascended to the elevation of 7,000 feet in La Veta the cork prematurely shot out and tagged me in the neck.  Jen mercifully continued to take pictures.  Uninjured we proceeded to drink.

    

We managed some level of luxury despite being in....La Veta.

Later in the evening we headed to a wine bistro (totally out of place in this town) to claim our bottle-of-wine voucher that was part of the LivingSocial deal.  

We drank wine, ate cheese and played some cribbage.  By the time we were done, Jen and I were tipsy enough that we seriously doubted our ability to gracefully leave the bistro.  We managed.

We took a nice long walk around town, ran in to some crazy characters who would've talked to us forever if they could and finally wen to bed.  The next morning we left La Veta, refreshed/hungover (both?)  yea...both.