Will H's USA Trip

The Wildlife Refuge located about 13mi north east of downtown Denver.  It is named as such because the site of the current park was previously a US Army munitions plant opened in 1942.  The plant produced both conventional and chemical weapons for use in WW2 and beyond.  It was later used to produce rocket fuel and even leased to a private companies to produce pesticides  Predictably, this type of activity had negative ecological impacts to the surrounding area.  In 1987, it was placed on the infamous "Superfund" list.  Since then, all manufacturing activity ceased and the lack of human activity created an involuntary park that endangered species (including Bald Eagles) began to inhabit.  The site was officially made a wildlife refuge in 1992.  Clean up was completed by 2010.  It's now a 17,000 acre park with several bike and hiking paths, even a small herd of wild bison. It's a different type of park than most of the ones I visited in D...

Quick Update - Took my friends out to Red Rocks for a little hike in the early afternoon and took in  a Colorado Rockies game in the evening. This was my fourth trip out to the amphitheater, but it was the first time my out-of-town friends had seen it.  We caught it on a clear sunny day. We did find my first rattlesnake sighting of the trip. That evening we watched the Rockies take on the Atlanta Braves in downtown Denver.  Their baseball stadium is looks nice and the backdrop is pretty good as well. A large portion of right field stands have been turned into a party zone with multilevel bars and even a cabana club located inside the stadium for the folks who feel like driving to the stadium in order to to sit on the couch and watch the game on TV. The Rockies ended up winning with a late game flurry of runs thereby bringing the baseball record for home teams in games I've attended to 2 and 3 (BOS and COL won; NYM, NYY, CHI all lost)

Quick Update - hiked near the the Realization Point trail head outside of Boulder and visited a few of the local breweries.  My friends and I started the morning by taking a walk up a trail that offers several views of downtown Boulder.      Zooming in we could get a peek at the Colorado Buffalo's stadium. Saw another example of a Steller's Jay In the evening we took some bikes and rode around the town of Boulder sampling wares from several breweries - quite a few good ones there. Ran into some prairie dogs along the way.     

The four of us got an early start Saturday morning for a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. Established in 1915, the park is enormous, over 265,000 acres with more than 300mi of hiking trails and one of the most diverse plant and animal environments in the United States.  It's also pretty easy to get to which means it's insanely busy during the summer months.  Most of the popular visitor center parking lots fill in the early morning and even the shuttles to the satellite lots fill up as well.  We choose to visit the Alpine center first as it hadn't reported as full yet. The Alpine visitors center is at the foot of a hill that leads to a point 12,000 ft above see level. Similar to the Mt Evans climb, even a small hill can take your breath away at that altitude.  During our little sojourn I experienced hail for the second time this month.  There's nothing quite like getting hit in the face with shards of ice at 35mph.      Just bel...