Colorado

by NeverFlyte

OK, so Colorado may not be as cold or as impressive as Gary Paulsen’s Minnesota. To me, though, it means holidays, feasts, free time and family.
My aunt and uncle own a bed & breakfast and a restaurant called “The Silver Nugget”. For the past three years, we’ve been going there for a week over Christmas break. We stay in their bed & breakfast and often, except for when there are too many people, we eat at the restaurant. It’s fun having whatever you want and sodas with every meal.
Over the days that we’re there, we do numerous activities. Some days we go sledding, some days we go to the hot springs. Everything is very close and easy to get to. The most memorable thing we did last year was hike on a trail along a river that was in a canyon (can’t remember what it was called). The trail started out as any normal trail, but by the middle, we were walking on a ramp-like thing that hung right over the river. There was a railing and even a cover on top to keep snow off, but the floor part was like a grid, with square empty spaces.
The water was around 20 feet below us, roaring loud enough that we had to talk by yelling in order to be heard. On either side of the fast-moving river was ice, from random chunks to icicles tinted a shade of light blue.
At the end of the trail (ramp?) it winded down in a series of staircases until you were standing beside the river in a little cavern with icicles big and small. It seemed slightly dangerous to be there where there were large spaces where the only thing was ice on the ground and nothing to hold on to. I walked cautiously across it anyway to get to the largest icicle, one that went straight from the ceiling to the floor, where it occasionally dripped.
There wasn’t any real smell, unless you count the wet dog smell that was in the Jeep we took to get to the river.