Day One, Part 2

Part two of Day One begins in Centennial, CO. After sitting around in the Walmart parking lot, observing the "people of Walmart" we tried to figure out what we should do over the next few hours. Fortunately we made the smart (well if we didn't we'd be idiots) decision to visit AAA before leaving, and got a bunch of maps and guidebooks. Looking through the Denver attractions, everything seemed pretty expensive, or wasn't open on Saturday so......sat around and observed more people of Walmart! No not really, at this point we thought I'd be a good idea to head south of Denver to where we'd be staying the next 2 nights. My dad has a cousin who lives in the Denver area, and he was nice enough to let us stay with him for the weekend, despite the fact that we had never met him before haha. Anyway, we headed down to Centennial and went to the parking lot of St. Thomas More church, we figured we'd go to the 4 pm Mass they had there, but we wanted to do something first. It was about 3:15 by then, and we had no idea what was around us, so we just kind of sat around and figured out what we wanted to do and then went to the Mass.

Important side note: Colorado is not Alaska, contrary to the assumption I had before arriving. Before I left, I contemplating bringing my leather jacket, and even thought for about 2 seconds about bringing a ski jacket, because I knew we'd be driving through the Rocky Mountains, and thought it'd probably be really cold. Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong, and it was about 80 degrees in Denver. In late September. Yeah I was surprised too. Not that I'm complaining at all.

So after the Mass we drove to my dad's cousin's house. He had the house to himself for the week, so there was plenty of room for us which was nice. I can sometimes be awkward around new people, just a fault I've always had and have worked hard to fix, but I felt like we hit off conversation quite well. Since he grew up in Boston and was family, there was plenty for us to talk about, and we had a nice conversation on the back porch before driving around a little and having dinner.

We had a nice dinner at a place called the "Dusty Boot" I thought it might literally be dusty, and since I'm a germophobe and constantly wash my hands at first I wasn't sure about eating at a dusty place. But of course it wasn't dusty, was kind of like an Applebee's with an old west theme. Pictures of cowboys adorned the walls, and apparently there was a saloon there too. Only thing it was missing was a picture of Clint Eastwood, or maybe Clint Eastwood himself, that'd be pretty cool.

Afterwards we went back to the house, chilled a little bit, but I was so exhausted from not getting enough sleep the previous night (and the night before, I had an appointment with the orthopedic doctor for my foot early the day before) that I just turned in early and called it a night. Think I watched a little TV, maybe not... Whatever.

I'll try to get a Day 2 summary up tomorrow, I'm already behind, but I'm determined...