Voices

After Helen and I spent a great week in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we took an airplane and arrived in Denver, Colorado. Colorado is the second stop of our BOMA journey.

I have been living here for two weeks. Colorado is so different from Easton. Colorado has beautiful and comfortable weather. There are green mountains, clear rivers, blue skies and a lot of open space. Probably because the views are so beautiful here, many people enjoy doing outdoor activities. From my observation, most people are in good shape. We have been doing activities that are close to nature, such as horseback riding, and hiking everywhere.

In this blog post, I will show you the amazing places we have been to and the awesome activities we have done these two weeks.

Driving in Colorado

My friend Nick who is in China on the interim trip right now told me he had seen a lot of people walking in China. In Colorado I can’t see anyone walking at all; almost everyone is driving.

A typical Colorado driving scene

There is a lot of open space, especially the winding mountain roads. Helen’s grandma’s old Subaru is our main mode of transportation. The car is manual transmission and it took me a while to get used to it. Sometimes the car would stall awkwardly in the middle of traffic when I didn’t control the clutch well. Fortunately I have gotten much better at it. Also, I found it odd that the highways do not have streetlights because in China all the roads have lights.

Pike’s Peak

Pike’s Peak is 14,115 ft. high, and it is one of the highest peaks in Colorado. When the sky is clear, I can see the top of Pike’s Peak from the ranch even though it is 2 hours’ drive away.

At the top of Pike's Peak!

We drove to the foot of the mountain and then the Cog Railway took us to the top. As the train went up, we saw farther and farther across the mountains and plains and the temperature became lower and lower. At one point the trees disappear and above that line only small bushes grow.

At the top it was about 25 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was strong. Helen’s hair was in her way and blowing everywhere and I kept my hands in my pockets all the time. However, the view was gorgeous. We were so high up that we could feel that the earth is round.

Red Rocks

On a wonderful day we went hiking with our Lafayette friend Christopher Regnier. He is from Denver and he hikes a lot in the Red Rocks Park area. Red Rocks Park is a wide area of red sandstones. Nature’s carving was beyond my imagination. After millions of years of wind blowing and rock weathering, the red rocks have all kinds of shapes.

Red Rocks Amphitheater

Also, we saw the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater in the park. It is a gigantic natural open-air amphitheater that has great acoustic effects. Helen and I will watch a concert covering John Denver songs there this evening. I am really looking forward to it.

Visit Fort Collins (and Wyoming)

Helen and I visited Helen’s engineer cousin Tyler and his girlfriend Amanda last week. They live in Fort Collins, which is a city north of Denver. Tyler told Helen and me about his work as a professional engineer.

Tyler and his bee hive

He took us to a restaurant in downtown Fort Collins and we had buffalo burgers, which are one of the things Fort Collins is famous for. Fort Collins is also famous for people making their own beer and bee keeping. Actually Tyler has a bee hive so he can make honey wine sometimes.

We also took a one-hour drive to the capital of Wyoming, Cheyenne, just to have a different experience of another state. It turned out Wyoming is a very different state. I found it very depressing driving there and through downtown Cheyenne because there were so few people on the street and there was nothing but empty flat land outside of downtown.

Rocky Mountains

Gorgeous Rocky Mountians

Rocky Mountains are a range of mountains that extend from Canada, across Colorado and all the way to New Mexico. The mountains in Colorado are huge, and even though we hiked the whole day, we only saw a small part of Rocky Mountain National Park. In the mountains, there was still snow melting slowly.

It was my first time to see a river formed from snow water. The interesting thing was that even though there was snow on the ground, it was very comfortable because the sun was shining. We hiked along several lakes and streams. Absolutely gorgeous.

I will update more blogs about my Colorado trip soon! Next time I will talk about my first experience on a ranch. Keep in touch!