Published July 30th, 2018

After my layover in Miami, I flew to Denver Colorado on Saturday, July 7th, to meet up with Kelly and go to Alex and Toby’s wedding! Alex is one of Kelly’s good friends from college – Kelly arrived in Denver a few days before me and was able to spend some time with them, which was great. The wedding was actually in Estes Park, Colorado, about an hour and a half drive from Denver – so I rented a car and got to the hotel in Estes Park at about 1:30 am Sunday night (the wedding was later on that day). The hotel was at the YMCA in Estes Park – it’s a huge place, more like a summer camp – there is all sorts of outdoors activities and hiking there. It’s one of the reasons Alex and Toby picked is for their wedding location, they regularly go hiking there on the weekends.

I got some sleep, and in the morning, Kelly and I got some food and went zip-lining! It was a lot of fun (and not something you typically do a few hours before a wedding!).

Later on in the day, we got lunch and a beer with some of Kelly’s friends who I hadn’t met yet. Then we got ready, and took a small bus up into the mountains, where the wedding location was. It was an absolutely beautiful place, with gorgeous mountains all around. It was also quite hot, but after a little while, some clouds came over and made it the perfect temperature. The ceremony was really nice – one of the great touches they did was have an orange tree that they were going to plant together, and they used soil from various places they’ve lived in their lives for the tree. They also had a post set up with the places everyone was coming from and what direction it was.

A few hours later, they had the reception, which again, was beautiful. The weather ended up getting a little worse, starting with a little rain and then even switching to hail for a bit, but after a few minutes, it was nice again. It was really a great experience to see everyone and meet some of Kelly’s friends.

The next day, we had a direct flight from Denver to Paris (I still can’t believe that flight exists!), so we did some shopping on our way to the Denver airport, got some food, and hopped on our plane. We landed at around 11 am on Tuesday, and after dropping off our bags, I went straight to work – probably not the best decision, but at least I was able to get enough hours in that I didn’t have to take another day of vacation. Overall, it was a long, great trip.