Day 1 - 11/26/2021

Day 1 - 11/26/2021

Last night, after an "eventful" late flight rescheduling shenanigans, we finally reached Denver at 10.30 PM. Akshay picked us up at airport and after short drive we reached his house in Adams County. Flying west from Pittsburgh. we lost two hours, so it was 12.30AM for our body clock. We had tasty thanksgiving dinner, and although, so much interesting "gappa'' we wanted to do, we decided to turn ourselves in.

After a nice and relaxed good night sleep, I woke up at 7:30 in the morning. Akshay and Kishori were already up and were out walking their dog - a black lab named "Simba". I immediately freshened up and set out to join them and that was when I first caught the glimpse of mighty Rocky Mountain ranges. I have always been a mountain-lover and before I realized I started taking a walk towards the mountain ranges. After a few steps a white, snow-covered peak started to show its presence from behind its rugged guardian mountains and I started to feel the sense of excitement and thrill. I used to go in Himalayas and all those memories; all adventures I did during my treks in Sahyadri, all those memories started to whelm me. I don't really know for how long I stood there looking at those peaks, but when I decided to go back, I was content.

We decided to visit El Dorado State Park and go for a short hike. El Dorado State Park is located right next to Boulder, CO and it took us about 40 minute. The US-36 Highway showed us more of the mighty Rockies and the excitement started to grow exponentially. As expected the park was full but we eventually got parking spot and around 2 PM we were able to start our hike. The high altitude makes even short hike very challenging. Rohan and Vijeta did a wonderful job of keeping up with the rough terrain and we started the climb. It was very different terrain from what we get back in western and central PA. Especially the steep inclination. After about 1.7 miles of hike we actually reached altitude of about 6500 ft, an increase of more than 1000 ft., and at that time the mighty white peaks started to peek out from El Dorado guards. That felt so pristine, I thought if I can freeze time, I would do it in a heartbeat. Once I gathered myself together, the amatuer photographer in me quickly captured couple of photos and we started our climb down.

On our way back home we decided to stop by a local brewery called Avery Brewery. It was quite refreshing to taste the locally brewed beer. Overall the first Day was quite productive.

That should conclude the outing for Day 1. More exciting stuff is planned for rest of the trip so certainly did not want to overdo the first day; plus tasty butter chicken and ghee rice would be waiting for us back home. So that is all for Day 1 to report.