One Weekend - Two Trips

March 10th-12th

This weekend Jed and I headed in two different directions. Jed took his Spring Break and headed to Denver with some friends to visit other friends while I stayed back east and took a road trip with a friend to Pittsburgh.

I loved seeing all Jed & company did through texts and pictures.

Tom, Megan, Jed & Brian at Red Rocks

Red Rocks Amphitheatre

Kilby, Jed, Mallory, Megan, Brian & Tom at a Colorado Avalanche Hockey Game

Pepsi Center

Street Art in RiNo District

Street Art in RiNo District

Meanwhile, on the east coast, Sam & I learned quickly that Pittsburgh was celebrating St. Patricks Day early with there main parade on Saturday so we found some appropriate attire and made our way downtown.

Met St Patrick himself and we got to be on the Yajagoff! Pittsburgh Podcast with the other guys

After we had seen enough of the parade, we went wandering and found Jimmy & Nino's bakery for lunch.

Our next stop was the Duquesne Incline to check out the views from the top of the mountain. It all felt like you were stepping back in time and the views were just amazing!

In typical #castrotravel style, it was time to find some weird & random places and Pittsburgh was full of them!

Our first weird place was Randyland. This guy is so quirky and we loved it.

Heading to a pinball arcade, Kickback Pinball Arcade, was next on our list of To Do's complete with awesome grilled cheese sandwiches for the full throw back feel.

The trifecta of unique places ended at the Bicycle Museum, Bicycle Heaven, where we saw thousands of bicycle and bicycle parts. This place was so fascinating.

We finished our day in Pittsburgh with dinner at Nicky's Thai right down the street for Arcade Comedy Theater where we watched a fantastic improv to close out our evening.

On Sunday, it was time to head home but we weren't ready to have the weekend end so we found a few adventures on our way home. But first, you can't start a road trip home without a over the top large breakfast and what better place to get that at then a diner, so off to Pamela's Diner we went.

We decided on our way out of the city to book tickets to Falling Water. It has been on both of our bucket lists and what better time to just do it. We had some time to kill while we waited for our time slot so we made the best of it by finding and friending Yogi Bear and going on a small little hike to a very icy waterfall, Cucumber Falls.

Our last top at Falling Water was just amazing! We loved going through the tour of the house and enjoying all the nature around us. It was so picture perfect with the snow covering so much. We definitely want to go back and see this house in all the different seasons.

Our very nice, grumpy tour guide that allowed me to take a photo in the only part of the house that doesn't have cameras watching us.

Mile High

January 25th - 28th

Jed and I took a few days off work and headed to visit Kilby and Johanna in Denver, CO. We headed out west Friday evening and got into Denver crazy late/early Saturday. We spent Saturday morning just hanging out with Kilby & Johanna and Nugget & Bobber.

Johanna was able to find a baby sitter for Saturday afternoon so we headed out to do a little driving and snowshoeing just the four of us.

That evening we hung out at the house, made Nannie's Fried Chicken and just hung out.

On Sunday morning, we all piled in two cars and headed north to Estes Park. It was so fun to see such a different landscape and enjoy all the mountains and snow.

When we got to Estes Park, we had some time to walk around the downtown area, check out some of the shops, check out the river walk and look for wildlife and grab a bit to eat at Poppy's.

We all had a great time hitting up an old time candy shoppe and Rocket Fizz where they had a ton of different Root Beers that I had to try. (We tried 5 different kinds, maybe one day I should take pictures and write about all the different ones so I can remember, but that isn't going to happen with this round...)

It comes as no surprise to many that Jed and I found an odd thing to check out while out in Estes Park, Estes Ark.

I was pretty disappointed that it was closed until May but I was still happy that we were able to see the ark.

On our way to the Ark, we were able to see wildlife. It was pretty crazy to see dozens of elk just hanging out in peoples yards right along the road. We had to stop (with everyone else) and watch them and take a few dozen pictures of them.

 And before we hopped back in the car to head home, we found a park by the lake where we could all play.

We finished the evening at the house watching the Grammy's.

Monday morning, Kilby headed off to work, Nugget had school so Jed and I headed out for the day with Megan and Danielle who were visiting Denver at the same time. The snow was really coming down but we didn't care. We were off on an adventure that started with a drive to Ft. Collins.

Our first stop was breakfast at Lucile's. This place was fantastic. You know any meal that starts with beignets is going to be out of this world...

As we stuffed our faces with New Orleans styled food, the snow continued to come down.

It was crazy! And they don't plow during the snow so it made for some interesting driving but Megan did a fantastic job.

After breakfast, we decided to go check out Colorado State University. Jed and Megan thought it would be fun to go visit the Video Department. We met Brett there and he was awesome! He gave us a full tour of the facilities and introduced us to lots of people.

We had a great time and I am so glad we stopped to do that.

The snow was still coming down when we left so we decided to head back south where it wasn't snowing as bad. We found our way to our first (of three) Buffalo Exchange's in Boulder.

After the Boulder Buffalo Exchange, we made a pit stop at the Laughing Goat for a little shopping break and to warm up from walking around and then headed down to Denver to hit both the stores down there. We were all quite successful.

After an afternoon of shopping, we headed to Highland Tavern for dinner. It was a cool little hole in the wall that we found for Diners, Drive In & Dives.

Our final stop for the night was a super fun bar that Jed and Kilby found when they made the road trip to Denver in June, The 1 Up Bar.

This place was filled with old school, original arcade games. The four of us had a great time re-living our childhoods by playing Joust, Donkey Kong Jr., Paperboy and a TON of other games.

We spent our final day in Denver we started in the snow, sledding, making snow angels and mini snowmen.

Then we went to check out the downtown area. We had a late lunch at Sam's #3 and met up with Stefanie.

It was great to see her and hear how things were going since we saw her last at her wedding.

After lunch, we found another one of our odd things, the Big Blue Bear.

The last picture before we broke the camera...

This is when tragedy struck and due to a fluke turn of events, our camera was dropped and it never recovered. But that didn't stop us from continuing to explore downtown Denver.

Since we had just finished lunch, we decided we needed to go visit "the cookie lady" on 16th Street Mall.

Thankfully there were still a few bags left before she closed down for the day. And to wash down those cookies we headed over to Ink! Coffee to warm up and get a drink.

By that time it was time to head out to find our next oddity, the 20 Foot Tall Dog made of dog tags.

It is just so fun to see how creative people can be. I should really try and think of something creative for people to come and take pictures with in the burg.

We finished the evening at Kilby & Johanna's playing Just Dance and Hide & Seek.

Jed hiding under the table.

Johanna hid in the dryer and almost got stuck

I am so glad we were able to make the trip and spend time with friends.We had a great time and I look forward to going again, maybe when it is a little warmer.