Granby, Colorado - July 4th weekend

Happy belated 4th of July Bloggers!!

Sorry, it's little late to wish but it's because I was away on the 4th of July weekend to an amazing place called Granby, Colorado.  One of the family friends had planned to go to Granby during the 4th of July weekend but I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go or not.  I finally decided a day before they were going to leave and I am so glad I went because the weekend was amazing.  They had booked a room in snow mountain ranch (YMCA) for one night on Sunday and coming back on Monday.

We left around 2:15 pm on July 3rd and the drive was about 2 hours.  We played GHOST (word game) on our way to the place.  We made a stop after an hour at the Berthoud pass which was just beautiful.  Here is a snap....

We got to the snow mountain ranch around 4:15 pm or so, dropped of our stuff in the room, and headed straight to the programs center to reserver some activities that we were looking forward to.  Unfortunately, it turns out that everything was fully booked up until Tuesday, July 5th and we were going to leave on July 4th :(.  I was really looking forward to the Zip line and Archary ....but too bad.  Instead, we did something different.  We rented mountain bikes to go on a biking trail to see the beautiful scenery.  This was the first time mountain biking for me ever...and I was not sure what to expect, but there were 5 of us going so it wasn't like I am going alone to explore the place on some secluded bike trail.  Well let's talk about that experience.  Before you get on the bike to go on up and down hill route, know how to change the gears based on different routes (if you are going up or when you are going down).  I could barely move my bike when we were going up the hill until one of the friends told me to change the gear.  Boy, that made a big difference!  If that wasn't enough, we had a 2 year old map which took us to a trail no where to be found on that map.  We went so deep inside the trail that we hit such steep routes, really bumpy and at one point, really muddy path.  This was all part of the adventure that I have never really experienced before.  After 2.5 hours of mountain biking (god knows how many miles), passing through the rainforest, and some beautiful scenery, and falling down after loosing the balance, it felt good when we found our way back to the ranch.  I wasn't worried in first place since there were 5 of us but I was definitely getting tired since it was my first time mountain biking.  When we got back to the Ranch, I was barely able to walk apart from my entire body aching like hell!!  But I loved it!  I would definitly do this again, but this was a bit extreme for first time mountain biker.  We wrapped up dinner by 9 pm and headed to their Kiva center which had bunch of Recreational activities.  We spent 2 hours there and played table tennis, foosball, basketball, and had great time watching 2 teams playing volleyball and soccer.  We got back to our room around 11:10 pm and decided to play some cards in the lobby area of the hotel.  You won't believe this, but we got so caught up in playing skip-bo (just in first hour) and then Golf (super fun cards game), that we were up till 3 AM.  I am sure we woke up some of the other visitors since the lobby was on the same floor as other rooms...but we were having a blast.  Finally we called it a night around 3:15 am and went to bed.

None of us had the energy to get up the next morning, but my aunt forced us to get out of bed by opening the window curtains wide open which brought in a load of sunlight!  Finally I drag myself out of the bed at 9 am, get ready and have some breakfast.  It is July 4th day and there was already a carnival going on near the programs center with bunch of games.  Our plan of today was to go on the 3 mile roundtrip hike to a waterfall near the ranch.  But again we got caught in programs center to check out the games they were playing.  We headed to our 3 mile hike around 12:15 pm and reached at the top of the waterfall in about 35 minutes.  The hike was really nice as we got to witness the mountains closely with a lot of rainforest atmosphere.  The waterfall was also really nice but it was really slippery when we tried to go in the waterfall to click some snaps.

We stayed there for about 15-20 minutes and then started heading back down.  As we were marching down, an army of mousquitos were marching up to attack us...hehe.  I literally had to have my  hands moving in karate style to fight them off!  We got back down in half an hour and headed straight for lunch around 1:30 pm.  I wasn't really tired from hike since we already did a heavy-loaded activity the day before.  After lunch, we played a lot more card games to kill the time before we head to Grand lake for the fireworks.  We played cards until almost 4:30 - 5 pm and then headed for Grand Lake.  We had to stop on the way to get the exact directions and it turns out that the gas station manager advised us not to go to grand lake since 1) we were already late to get to the place and 2) it was going to be rediculously crowded there before and after the fireworks since they only have 1 lane for going and coming in traffic.  After much debate, we just decided to head back home to denver and see the fireworks in Denver Country Club.  On the way back, I kind of fell sick and head really heavy headache which felt like my head would explode...but luckily felt better once we got out of the mountains. 

We made it in time to denver to see the fireworks and it was indeed spectacular!  It was around 10 pm but the day is not over yet.  We ordered Pizza from Pizza hut and had dinner at home and before we leave, my friends convince us to stay little longer to play the card games.  Well, that little longer was until 12:40 am....I had to go to work next morning but I had no idea how I was going to get up.  Me and my brother got home around 1:30 am and I fell asleep right as I went to bed!! Aaahhh...finally some relaxing time...needed to get some sleep after 2 days of hard-core activities.

Overall, the weekend was fantastic, and Granby was such a beautiful place.  I would love to come here again since they have so many activities to do here and coming with a big group is always a fun thing. 

Until my next post, Ciao!!