Heeeere's Theo!

Yesterday Liana (housemate) and I went on a weekend adventure to Estes Park. Not more than thirty minutes drive from Boulder Estes Park is a small gateway town to the Rocky Mountains national park on the eastern side of the front range. In truth there are only two things to do in Estes. The first is hiking and the second is visiting the Stanley Hotel.

The Stanley is as beautiful as it is incongruous with its humble mountain town surroundings. A splendind example of turn of the century Georgian architecture the hotel is most famous for being the inspiration behind Stephen King's horror classic 'The Shining'. Stephen King (yet another celebrity Boulder resident) stayed there whilst writing the novel. In the book the Stanley was renamed the Outlook Hotel- they filmed the inside shots at another hotel in Oregon apparently but the outside shots are definitely of the Stanley in the middle of winter. I had hoped there might be a door & axe combo for visitors' photo opportunities but sadly these were absent. In fact the bell hop looked positively angry and having been asked.

After visiting the Stanley I went shopping for a cowboy hat in preparation for my roadtrip. After much humming and hawing I plumped for an authentic wool 'Panther' hat which in my mind at least bears a striking resemblance to Indiana Jones'. The Western shop we visited had all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff including the oddly creepy raccoon skin trappers hat below complete with a face! In retrospect I wish I had bought it now.

There is much chatter in town at the moment about the possibly imminent arrival of snow. It hasn't snowed properly in Boulder at all yet which means it's very late, which in turn means it's likely to dump down very heavily when it does come. I'm uncertain of whether I'll get out before the snap blows into town.