255.6 miles

Short trip today!  But we did get up late and missed the hotel's free breakfast.  I saw my second hitchhiker ever somewhere along the way.

We drove through a few rainstorms, but it's still been the best drive so far - the views through the Rockies have been fantastic - thanks Charlie & Tom, for recommending that route!

Driving through the Rockies is pretty crazy because the temperature will drop from 100º in Grand Junction to 55º up around Vail.

We checked in to our hotel in the afternoon, then got dressed to go out in the city.  We made a couple of stops on the way out, once to get gas ($2.96/gallon!!) and also to get some ice cream at Baskin Robbins.  At the shopping center near Baskin Robbins, there were a bunch of cones all over and I couldn't figure out to where to get in, so I decided to drive over an already-flattened cone.  Unfortunately I also managed to drag it alongside my car across the lot and into my parking spot in front of the ice cream shop.  It was pretty funny because it was just sitting next to the passenger door when we got out.  Or it was really funny until some guy came running at us from NOWHERE yelling about how I was a terrible driver and I shouldn't be on the road because there was this cone there.  I'm not sure he understood what happened and thought I had accidentally dragged it there, but kept ranting, "what if it was a puppy?"

We hauled it out of there (after getting our ice cream) and went to downtown Denver.  We walked down the 16th Street Mall which is just a long street with a lot of shops and a shuttle that stops every block if you're really lazy getting between stores.  We stopped at Earls for drinks and dinner on their upstairs balcony.

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