Colorado and Estes Park - A Fun Trip

Recently we took a girl's trip to Colorado to visit some friends of ours. I have never been to Colorado and on this trip we went to a variety of different places. We stayed in Denver with our friends and enjoyed ourselves quite a lot. I hope to go back sometime soon because Colorado is an amazing state. I also have very exciting news at the bottom, so check that out after you read!

Our first stop was DIA (Denver International Airport) at midnight! Why at midnight? Because our flight was delayed until about 8:40p.m. Loved staying up that late. However both SFO (San Francisco International Airport) and DIA were empty and so was our flight. We got a whole row to ourselves! The new SFO terminal 1 is actually really amazing and super nice. It's not the international terminal though, so if you're flying internationally you have one of the older terminals.

After we slept in from our late night flight, we headed out to Boulder. We did some shopping and ate at a restaurant called the West End. I definitely recommend eating there if you're in Boulder because there's roof top eating with a great view of the Rockies. Boulder has a lot of great stores to go to and if you're looking for some new hiking gear or cold weather items, go to the North Face and prAna store. There's a Billabong store too as well but there's not much to shop since we're going into the Fall/Winter cold season now.

After Boulder we went back to Denver and then I decided to go to a local high school soccer game with one of my family friends. It was an honestly really boring game because nobody scored for the 45 minutes we were there. And apparently one of the traditions for the boys on the soccer team is to bleach their hair and I'm honestly not really sure why they thought that was a good idea. Go them.

The next day we went out to visit another family friend who my mom hasn't seen in over ten years. They moved out to Australia and just recently moved back- and conveniently to Colorado! We ate at a nice place called the Yardhouse and I believe they are also out in California. So if you happen to find one I would recommend eating there. I had a really big BLT and it was yummy. There was also a really fancy restaurant across the way that had lots of fancy cars parked out front. I think we saw a Bentley, a Porsche, and even a Lamborghini.

After eating at the Yardhouse, we went back to the house and my family friend had just gotten back from her practice, so we drove to a corn maze/pumpkin patch. Except I think the actual road to the corn maze was the maze itself. We had to buy tickets from a lady in the front and then drive all the way to the maze. We almost got lost several times and then regained hope when we saw cars parked along the road picking pumpkins.

Me in the corn maze

After we drove through the entire farm trying to find this maze, we were quite disappointed with what we got. It was a Big Foot maze, and there were three different routes to take. We took the middle route which wasn't very long and were honestly a little sad. When you first started the maze, the corn stalks were cut really short and you could see the entire maze. As you kept going, it got taller, but you could still see everything. It was also 80 degrees outside which you would not expect from Denver in October. Our disappointment led to us buying some sugar cookies and going to get candy apples from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for dessert later. Which speaking of food...

We went to this amazing little fusion restaurant called Zen after the disastrous corn maze. I believe it was a fusion of different Asian foods like Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese. My mom and her friend ordered sashimi and sushi (pictured below) and it looked yummy. I got chow mein that wasn't your typically Chinese chow mein. It tasted and looked almost like wontons but with little rice noodles and little rice crackers. It tasted good but it was certainly an interesting dish.

Now on Saturday we had plans to go to Estes Park right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. It's about an hour and a half drive from Denver so we had a nice mini road trip on our way up. We had brunch at this little place called the Big Horn Restaurant. Their breakfast is really scrumptious and if you want to eat meat that is the only place to get it in Estes Park. Honestly not surprising since there's a lot of venison and buffalo eaten in Colorado.

Once we finished eating our brunch, we headed out to do some shopping before our tour at the infamous Stanley Hotel. More on that later. Our first stop was one of the two year-round Christmas stores in Estes. They had a lot of really cool stuff that you wouldn't really find elsewhere, like a Crayola Christmas house. They also had a lot of interesting ornaments like Hostess Powdered Donuts, Barrel O' Monkeys, and lots and lots of assorted food items. They had an entire section dedicated to just food. If the food wasn't plastic I would've eaten it all.

The Christmas store was definitely a fun store. But we also went to a couple of other small stores. They consisted mainly of touristy type stores, a taffy shop, and a crystal/gem store. It was a lot of fun to go through all the store fronts and just see Estes Park.

Onto the Stanley Hotel!

If you haven't heard of the Stanley Hotel, now you have. The Stanley Hotel is famous for being one of the filming places from 'the Shining'. The Shining is a horror/slasher flim with a mystery side to it released in the 1980s. It was originally written by the famous author Stephen King in 1977. It follows a man named Jack Torrance who is a writer trying to cure his writer's block. He stays at the Overlook Hotel trying to write. His wife and son, Danny, who has psychic premonitions join him as well. Jack's writing goes absolutely nowhere and Danny's premonitions because disturbing, Jack turns into a homicidal maniac after discovering some of the hotel's darkest secrets.

The Stanley Hotel is one of the hotels used as inspiration for the Shining. It's also where Stephen King wrote the book. And on top of all of that, it's one of the creepiest hotels out there.

The tour we took was about an hour long and it was one of the many available at the hotel. Our tour was just on the history of the hotel and on the Shining. If you're visiting Estes Park I strongly suggest visiting the Stanley. You can eat or drink there, but taking a tour is definitely one of the great things to do if you're visiting.

So on the tour we learned about the history of the hotel. One of the interesting things was that the one of the founders of the hotel- Freelan Oscar Stanley had tuberculosis three times! And survived! He originally moved to Colorado to get away from the dirty air of Maine since the doctors told him he only had six months to live. However, Colorado had lots of coal mining going on at the time so that didn't help him at all, and was even told he had less time to live! He ended up going to Estes Park which had lots of clean air. There he co-founded the Stanley Hotel with his brother Francis after miraculously healing.

But that's not the only interesting thing in this hotel. Stephen King wrote one of his books, the Shining at this hotel in room 217. In the movie it is room 237 because it was not filmed at the Stanley Hotel. The actual movie was filmed somewhere else. Room 237 doesn't even exist at the Stanley. An interesting fact about the hotel room is that, based on what our tour guide said, that it's usually booked solid for a year. For October he said it's booked for seven years, and it's only seven because that's the furthest you can book to. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but still pretty crazy!

The Stanley is also known for being haunted. This is one of the big reasons it's super popular. There are lots of stories of strange, paranormal things that have occurred in the hotel. One of them was about a spirit of a housemaid, who walked into room 217 (coincidentally the same room Stephen King stayed in) with a candle while it had a gas leak. The room exploded and destroyed about 10% of the hotel. Somehow the housemaid survived and she continued to work at the hotel for the next 40 years. After she died, it was said she was seen wandering the property. There are also stories about her spirit folding the clothes of guests who stay in room 217 and cleaning up after them. Some of the other popular rooms besides 217 which are rumored to be haunted are room 401, 407, and 428.

There are many other stories such as this one, and if you'd like to learn even more about the Stanley (if you feel so compelled to do so) click on this link here!

The trip to Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel was definitely a super awesome experience. I hope we get to go back to Colorado soon because I'd love to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. I've only seen it from above but it was beautiful.

We had dinner at Gordon Biersch where I saw the Astros and the Mariners play a very long and tedious 18 inning game. Later that night I saw the Dodgers completely lose the playoff series to the Padres and it was very, very disappointing to say the least. Go Dodgers.

And that was pretty much the end of our trip! The exciting news I get to share with everyone is that I will hopefully be taking a trip to London with my friend and her family for Thanksgiving! We bought the tickets when we were in Colorado, but I still don't have a passport haha... Please pray for me. If I do end up getting (please come in time passport) then I'll hopefully have lots of exciting things to share with all of you!

So with that I hope you enjoyed the post and see you soon!

(Here's some more photos below!)