Colorado is possibly the greatest place on Earth.  With over 320 sunny days a year, the weather is beautiful year round, the scenery second to none, it's not over crowded, there is always something to do, the best skiing anywhere is less than 2 hours away, on and on.

We live Longmont, which is about 45 minutes North of Downtown Denver, and about 20 minutes northwest of Boulder.  We are also about 30 minutes from Fort Collins and 90 minutes from Cheyenne Wyoming.  We can be in Colorado Springs in and hour and a half, and Pueblo in 2 hours.  Dillon is an hour and a half on a decent day, and Vail is 2 hours.  Albuquerque is about 6.5 hours south, and Dallas is 12.5 hours away.  Columbus is just over 20 hours, but you gain a couple hours chasing the sun.

To get to our house is easy.  Take I 70 West to I 25 north.  Get off on Route 119 west and take it to County Line Road.  Take a right on County Line and in a mile take left on 9th avenue.  Go up to Deerwood and take a right.  Take Deerwood to Chukar and take another right.  We are the second house on the left.

Longmont is name for Long's Peak, which is the northernmost "fourteener", a mountain over 14,000 feet, in the Rockies, and the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Directly to the east of Long's peak is a near fourteener named Mount Meeker.  When you look westward these 2 peaks dominate the mountain range and because of the perspective from Longmont, they are dubbed the Twin Peaks.  They are about 40 miles to the west of Longmont.

In the above picture, you see mount Meeker in front, and the top of Long's peak in the back.  I think the peak just to the right is Mount Lady Washington.  It is amazing how objects as massive and unchanging can look different every time you see them.

The elevation here is right around 5,000 feet.  Denver is a couple hundred feet higher.  To contrast sizes, Mount McKinley/Denali is 20,320 feet.  Mount Rainier in Washington is also a fourteener, but it rises from sea level.  Mount Everest is an amazing 29,000 feet!  More than 2x as high as Long's Peak.

Climbing fourteeners is a hobby here, with plenty of them available as day hikes.  Some only take a few hours.  Long's Peak is around 6 hours round trip, and one of the more difficult hikes.  I hope to start bagging fourteeners in 2004.  From Denver, you can see Long's peak to the north, Mount Evans to the west, and Pike's Peak (Colorado Springs) to the south.  They are all fourteeners.  The area from Pike's Peak up to about Fort Collins is called the Front Range.  The other side of Colorado is called the western slope.

I don't know if it is people in Colorado, or if it's for the many visitors, but there must be a large population of very stupid people here.  Maybe it's just all the hippies.  We see all kinds of very silly signs:

OH MY GOD! WE ARE GOING TO RUN RIGHT INTO THE MOUNTAIN!!!, wait, whew, there's a tunnel!

I guess Duck and cover didn't work like they thought it would!