We thought it was TX where things are bigger

It's been a bit since we've posted (other than that "it's been a bit since we posted but we're still alive"). To catch you all up in a nutshell, we:
-found big things in Denver
-found a yard of statues
-saw two more national parks

The title of the post (not to mention the first bullet point) refers to the huge variety of large things there are in Denver. On Tuesday, we started at the roadside America site, which offers a plethora of interesting, odd, and unusual (and sometimes all three of these together) sites on, well, roadsides across America. This is where we learned of a large blue bear in Denver, a large chair with a not quite as large horse inexplicably standing on it, and some other large objects scattered around Denver. As we drove around more, we seemed to find more and more large objects on every street corner. (Well, it was usually just one object per street corner, but more and more street corners seemed to have large objects.) We also found a bunch of construction workers on a very slanty roof, and, since we were stopped at a red light, we threw in a picture of them as well.



After the tour of large objects in Denver, we headed to Fort Collins. On the way, we stopped by a yard filled with statues of all sorts of dinosaurs, swans, trucks, flowers, and other objects made out of car parts. We were expecting just a few statues, but there was a never-ending field of them. We took a picture of the list of them, which covers the front and back of a sheet of paper, so you can get an idea of the sheer enormity of the place. We weren't the only ones visiting, as we saw kids from a day camp as well as senior citizens. The review we'd read on Roadside America hadn't mentioned that the place was fun for all ages. The video is a little long, since the park amused us so much, so either bear with us, or stop it after you get the general idea.



On Wednesday, we headed to Rocky Mountain national park, where we saw not just huge mountains and great scenery, but also a decent bit of wild life. At two picture stops, we noticed people leaning over an edge of the overlook, intently pointing their cameras down. Being no stooges, we followed their example, and got a picture of a little squirrel sort of animal and also a yellow bellied marmot. We also saw more elk - this time without their butts facing us. These elk had horns. We're starting to notice a pattern where elk with horns show us their face, while elk without horns show us their butts. In addition to great wild life and scenery, we experienced hugely high astoundingly strong winds. The kind of winds you feel when standing in the open door of a plane winds (when said plane is flying, rather than on the ground).



On Thursday, we left Veena and Jerry's, where we'd stayed during our adventures in Denver (thanks for the hospitality, Veena and Jerry) and headed to Great Sand Dunes. We discovered that: (a) it's odd to see piles (well, dunes, really) of sand suddenly spring out of nowhere, and (b) sand + water = lots of bugs.



We'd be remiss if we didn't include two pieces of information in this post: (1) we decided that, of all the many brew pubs and breweries we saw in Denver and the surrounding areas, we liked Breckenridge Brewery the best. They had great beer, great food, baseball on the tv, tie-dye tee shirts, and (more important to some of us than others of us), Grateful Dead on the speakers. (2) two of us have become quite addicted to ping pong. One of these two is the champion of not just the best of 3, but also the best of 5, best of 7, and best of 9. (The best of 3 turned into the best of 5, which turned into the best of 7, which turned into the best of 9.) We'll let you all speculate and guess on who that champion is.