During the weekend before Memorial Day weekend I was finally able to tackle my first 14er of the year. I was set to meet up with some friends from out of state at the trailhead of Quandary Peak at 4am in order to try to reach the summit by sunrise. By the time we hit the trail however, it was 5am due to late arrivals and longer than expected preparation time. The trail was covered in a thick layer of snow from start to finish and made for a much harder than expected climb. Two members of my group were also lugging their skis up the entirety of the mountain, which did not help our progress in the slightest. Though the hike took much longer than expected, the end result was still a fantastic view at the top and a huge sense of accomplishment at the bottom.
Memorial Day weekend was one for the books. Despite not originally planning on travelling back to the Midwest for quite some time, I finally talked myself into it. The Indy 500 beckoned and I was not about to miss it and seeing my family and friends. In order to save money on the flight out, I flew into Chicago and spent the whole day Friday exploring the city. Though I lived within a few hours of Chicago for most of my life, I never really had the opportunity to go downtown and see a lot of what the city had to offer. The cityscape actually blew me away and exceeded my expectations as I walked over twelve miles all over the downtown area. I can now say that Chicago is probably one of the most impressive cities I've ever been to. That night I hitched a ride with some friends down to Indianapolis and stayed the night at my old house before getting up the next morning and heading to the Speedway. That Saturday was a fabulous time as I met up with friends I hadn't seen in quite some time and my brother was even able to join us. We played a lot of volleyball and tailgated all day long as you can only do on 500 weekend. On race day we all headed into the Speedway to watch one of the most exciting races I could remember. I personally started off with the majority of my friends in the infield of Turn 3 for the first fifty laps or so then went with a few others to go see part of Hardwell's performance in the Snake Pit for a while. The performance was fantastic and was really great to be a part of before deferring back to the race where I eventually met up with another group of friends in the actual stands of Turn 4. There we watched the last thirty laps or so from above the track, where we witnessed Ryan Hunter-Reay become the first American to win since 2006. The rest of the weekend was spent catching up with family, which was of course a great time as well. It had been quite a few months since I had seen them so it was rewarding to be able to hang out with them, even if for a short time.
This past weekend was quite the pleasant surprise. Though we stayed in to kick off the weekend on Friday night, some friends of mine and I made plans to head up to Boulder for some good times. I had originally planned on meeting a former co-worker for a hike around the Flatirons but traffic and rain got in the way. Instead, when my co-worker arrived in Boulder he joined my other friends and me as we made our way from one brewery to the next around the area. Over the course of the day we took tours and sampled beer at more than five different breweries. It was a great time and we all vowed to do it again in the future in order to see many of the other breweries in the Boulder area. The next day was a bit more lazy, as one might expect after our previous day's activities; however, I decided that it was too nice a day to waste and so I headed southwest to take on a hike I had my sights set on for quite some time. The hike was in Pike National Forest and was a trail to the top of a fire lookout called "Devil's Head." The hike was not too tough, especially for what I have become accustomed to, and I was up and down in quite fast. Despite the ease, the view was fantastic at the top as I was able to get a 360 degree view of the surrounding area, including Pike's Peak to the south, the plains to the east, many snow-capped mountains to the west and even the city of Denver to the north. Here are some of the pictures I took on my small expedition.
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