I took my vaccinated self and busted out of quarantine in a grand way. I went to Colorado for Keyla’s wedding and I had the best, best time. After not socializing for an entire year, it was a wonder to be able to share happiness with someone. To dance! To drink! To be offered weed! To make new friends.
I’m not a natural solo traveler. Sometimes travel logistics stress me out, but my main reason is that I don’t like to drive and I really don’t like finding parking. Parking stresses me out. I know, it’s a bit of a lame excuse for not traveling on my own. I found a UCS ad at Dulles.
I will say that the airports were more crowded than I thought they would be. There really was no distancing, the planes were 60-80% full. I would not have gone on this trip if I had not been vaccinated, it would have been too anxiety provoking for me. I made it to the hotel in Estes Park on Wed and was met by a very happy and enthusiastic St. Patrick’s day celebrator.
The morning of the wedding (Thurs), I ran around the lake in town. And then, since it was still early, I went to some store and rented snowshoes and got some recommendations of where to go snowshoeing.
I went snowshoeing for a few hours by myself. I count this as brave.
And then there was the wedding. It was so much fun. None of Keyla’s family could come from Buenos Aires because of the travel restrictions. I slowly realized that I was the only person at the wedding on “Keyla’s side”. Everyone else was Mark’s family or close coworkers.
I met and talked to everyone at the wedding. I got to sit next to the mother of the groom for dinner. I got to dance and drink. I got to teach Keyla about the garter belt. I had the best best time. So happy I could celebrate with Keyla and Mark.
The day after the wedding, I had a lovely brunch with Keyla and Mark where I had the chance to talk at length and to update Keyla and to learn all about Mark. After brunch, I took an afternoon touristy group tour of Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s not the high season for anything really, but we did spy a couple of elk and deer.
On Saturday, the day I was flying home, I got up early and went to one of the most traveled hikes in the entire park. I got to the parking lot at about 6:30 am ensuring both the parking spot and that I’d have the trail to myself for at least a little bit of time. And on my outbound snowshoe trip, I saw only 3-4 groups of people. This trail was to Emerald Lake which was suppose to take you past 3 lakes. About an hour into the hike, I realized that I was standing on top of and in the center of one of the lakes and then I got really nervous. I was just following the tramped down snow trail that countless hikers before me had taken. It had been in the 60s during the day all week. I could see the slushy foot prints from the day before which then had frozen overnight. I really didn’t want to fall into the lake with no one else around. So I turned around. On the way back, the trail was much more congested and I had a great time offering to take photos of groups of people. That was fun. I always pulled up my mask to take the photos, but the last group was a bunch of seniors who said – we don’t care about masks, we all got our shots.
I’m so happy I went. I’m so happy for K & M. And I’m so happy I didn’t fall into a freezing cold lake.
