June 17: Denver, Colorado

We awoke in the Holiday Inn Express parking lot, sweaty but happy that there had been no police interference during the night. Since we hadn't seen any signs of a free continental breakfast, we decided to head straight to Arches National Park to do a little hiking and sightseeing.

At Arches we stopped at the visitor center to use the bathroom, and we saw a couple dozen people sitting outside in lawn chairs. Since nothing but the bathrooms were open yet, we were a little confused -- was everybody waiting impatiently for the gift shop to open? Then we realized the real reason these sleepy people were waiting wrapped in sleeping bags at 7:00 in the morning: they were waiting to reserve campsites. So that's why there hadn't been any left when we arrived the previous evening at 7:00 pm.

We wanted to tell everybody that the Holiday Inn Express parking lot was free and didn't require waiting in line at dawn, but we decided to go check out the arches instead.

After admiring the landscape and looking at several amazing geological features while driving through the park, we arrived at the site of our hike. We planned to walk out to see the Delicate Arch, which you probably know as the arch on Utah's license plate.

After leaving our fellow hikers in the dust (literally), we made it up to the viewpoint, where we found only one other family. Everybody else in the park was still waiting for a campsite, while arrived at the top before the sun got too hot and before all the other tourists got in the way of our photos. It was beautiful.

After some more picture-taking as we left the park, we headed off to Denver. The drive through the mountains was breathtaking, and we passed many ski resorts and just a little bit of snow.

Arriving in Denver, we decided to check out some of the sights before heading to Louisa's uncle's house. We stood on the step of the Colorado State House that is exactly one mile above sea level, and we walked around downtown for a little while.

We then surprised Louisa's Uncle John at work, and then drove the few blocks to his house where we could finally relax. After a nice dinner of quesadillas, John's wife Catherine came home and introduced us to the wonders of So You Think You Can Dance, which may be our new favorite show during the Gossip Girl off-season.

After deciding that since we wanted to vote for all the contestants we might as well not vote at all, we went to bed.