Flying by the Seats of Our Pants: Denver Colorado

Our decision to go to Colorado was actually based on the second half of our trip. The kids had short week in school, only having two days due to election day and scheduled conferences. My husband managed to finagle a few days off a the end of the week and I was dying to have the lamb chops at the Wine and Food Festival again . So, my husband and I decided that the kids and I wold take one of our trips at the beginning of the week and then meet him in Disney at the end of the week. The plan was to surprise the kids with the second half of the trip.

So, my trip planning began with my searching for open flights from wherever to Disney on Wednesday. I plugged in Disney as my final destination and then just kept plugging in airport codes until I found a flight that looked open enough to book. And that is how we came up with Denver Colorado.

Big Boy was giving me a hard time about leaving town because he wanted to stick around and hang out with his buddy so I ended up telling him where we were going and then swearing him to secrecy. I had hoped that the kids would not know about Disney until we were on the Magical Express.

I packed a little heavier since we would be gone a whole week and we need certain Disney stuff (our pin trading lanyards, refillable mugs, bathing suits) so we had t check bags. I packed our usual food items.

Having tired a little of the bagel sandwiches we usually eat, I decided to try taking bread. I purchased a plastic breadbox and it worked out very well. I put the bread in our checked bag and it held up. I had our usual carry on cooler with lunch meats and cheese and grabbed zip lock bag of ice from Auntie Annie's Pretzels after we went through security.

We easily got on our first choice flight to Denver but arrived rather late in the day. We had booked a hotel though Priceline.com and had no idea what to expect.

It turned out to be a huge convention center type hotel and, other than the pool being a little small, it was very nice.

After a quick dinner at Long John Silvers and a dip in the pool, we went to bed with the plans to set out early the next day.

We decided to spend our first day at the Denver Zoo. We happened to time our trip perfectly with the zoo's free admission day.We arrived a little before opening (or so I thought) and couldn't figure out why the line kept growing and growing but we were not going in. This is when I discovered that I was foiled again by time. We had traveled over daylight savings time and the clock on the rental car had not been changed. I was an hour early.

The zoo is very nice and the weather was perfect. I had thought that Denver in November would see us in parkas but we had a sunny warm day and enjoyed the zoo in our shirtsleeves.