Brian was out here all last week, yay. Unfortunately, it rained almost every day he was here! Denver has been in drought mode for 5 years and it decides to rain the whole week he's here! But hey at least neither of us got sick, I figure things are looking up :)

There was much soccer watching as the World Cup was in it's last week so we caught most of the games at The Park (a bar around the corner from me) where the beer flowed, Hooray Beer! We had to watch the last game at the airport as Brian's flight home was scheduled to leave in the middle of it. His flight ended up getting cancelled which was sort of good because he got to watch the whole game live and I got him for a whole extra day, but bad because he ended up having to spend 6 hours at the airport and miss a day of work.

Anyway, on Sunday and Monday last week we went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was gorgeous except for the crazy lightning/rain/hail storms which seemed to hit every afternoon. We hiked nearly 10 miles in on the first day and stayed at Lost Lake which to our surprise was completely infested with mosquitoes.


We hadn't prepared for that at all and so had no bug repellent and ended up hiding in our tent whenever we were at the campsite. Monday morning we explored the area around Lost Lake and attempted to scale Icefield Pass but ended up turning back halfway up. This was probably the smartest thing we did all day, however, since soon after one of the above mentioned freak storms set in and we were later informed that the pass is pretty dangerous this time of year without an ice-axe and cramp-ons. Afterwards we had to book it back to the campsite since it was starting to lightning and we were far away from any sort of forest shelter.


After waiting out the rain in the tent once again there was a lull and we heard a voice outside wondering if anyone was around. Turns out it was a Park Ranger and we were camping in the wrong spot, oops. Apparently, I had completely not paid any attention to the name on the backcountry pass and had assumed we were meant to be at Lost Lake when in fact we were supposed to be about a mile down at Lost Meadow. He asked a whole ton of questions and the whole time I'm hoping he doesn't see the bottle of 151 in the tent and that our bear bag wasn't quite high enough in the tree (it was impossible to find a sturdy and high enough branch in the wimpy trees near our tent).


Eventually, he decided not to fine us the $50 for camping in the wrong spot and not to tell Colorado DMV that I'd moved to denver in the winter and still hadn't registered my car or gotten a colorado license. He said we were free to stay at Lost Lake that night as long as it was ok with the two guys that were supposed to be there, then he disappeared back into the woods. Since it was only 3 o'clock or so and we didn't particularly like the idea of camping 5 ft. away from two random guys we decided to break camp and head down to Lost Meadow.


But when we got there about half an hour later we were feeling really good and weren't looking forward to another hard packed dirt night or the early morning march out so we could catch the 1 o'clock soccer game at a bar in Denver. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to make the long trek back to the car. This was a great idea until the last mile or so when my feet decided that it was way past time to stop hiking. Fifteen miles in one day is a lot. That night was slept like the dead.


The next day was 4th of July and we had tickets to see the Colorado Rapids play the New England Revolution at Mile High. Unfortunately, it also was the night of the worst downpour I'd ever seen in Colorado. They had to hold the game for over a half an hour during the first half because of the lightning. Luckily, we decided to move early on and got pretty good seats in a sheltered area.


The fans were great though and occupied themselves by performing "the wave" during most of the delay. The best part about the game was the halftime show, I've never been so entertained at half-time. At DC United games they often have little kids play short sided games on the field, the Rapids had a short sided game played by a bunch of random Mascots! It was hilarious, mostly because the field was so wet that they were constantly slipping all over the place and completely missing the ball.


Ok, so maybe you had to be there.

After the game was a very pretty fireworks display accompanied by, I think, every song that ever had the word 'America' in it.


The rest of the week was fairly relaxing. It rained so we spent a lot of the time inside. We caught the midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean on Thursday night, which was great. We saw Superman Returns which we enjoyed despite all you movie snobs and your scathing reviews (you know who you are). Lighten up, I don't see how anyone who's grown up on the original movies could have expected more than what they got. As far as I'm concerned the Superman myth has never been internally consistent and has always merely been an excuse to show off Superman's ability to lift lots of heavy objects and pine over Lois Lane. Personally, I went to see a guy that looks a lot like Christopher Reeve repeatedly save people in an action-packed two hours. The only real downside was the guy sitting behind us who repeatedly whispered the words "that's superman's son" even after the fact had been made painfully obvious to everyone over the age of 4.