Makin' Like Pioneers

On our trek across the plains, we took the long way through Denver to see our friends, the Simmons. We had a lot of fun. The Simmons live in a beautiful neighborhood right outside of Denver. We left Omaha right after Craig took his last final with our car packed so tight there was not one more inch of empty space. We got to Denver late that night, and Maddie decided to surprise Emily and Mark with a big ole toot as soon as they opened the door. All we said was "well hello".

Emily and Andrew were great little tour guides. The next day we went to Red Rock,

saw dinosaur tracks, had free ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, and ate at Casa Bonita the. Casa Bonita is the restaurant that the Mayan was patterned after. Thanks to Craig, we got the sweetest table in the restaurant.

The diver climbed right up to our table to take a dive into the water far below. Maddie got a good stare at his fabulous abs. That's the actual diver diving in the background!

The next day we went to a really neat butterfly place where Craig even got to see if he could jump as far as a grasshopper

and visited downtown Denver.

Denver definitely has some fabulous architecture downtown--very modern, as well as some awesome older homes, like Molly Brown's (as in "the unsinkable Molly Brown"). We're excited to visit again. Sweet little Andrew was such a fun friend for Maddie while we were in Denver. He helped feed her, helped push the stroller, and he also shared his toys.

We had planned on leaving early the next day for the last leg of our trek to Utah, but we were surprised by a May Day snow storm that shut down the pass out of Denver. We took off once the pass was open, but we still were in for quite the white knuckle drive. We actually stopped just past Veil to wait out the storm a bit. We finally got out of the big mountains and enjoyed a fantastic drive through Glenwood Canyon. We hit some more crazy snow down Spanish Fork Canyon, but we finally got to Provo where we decided to stop for the night. We finally got to Tooele the next morning. Maddie was more than excited to finally be out of her car seat. So after almost a week, we were finally in Tooele where we're staying with my sweet sis and bro in law and their 2 dogs.