Back to Denver...

We left Winter Park after what turned out to be an amazing snowboarding season for Stuart.  He got to board in Canyons in Park City-Utah, Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail, Beaver Creek, Loveland, A Basin and WinterPark in a bumper snow season (and apparently still is!!)

Our last night at Winter Park produced a beautiful sunset

and after three attempts to depart, thinking we had left the heating on, the water on, the place unlocked, etc etc, we finally left.

and on Friday afternoon we made our way down to stay with Connie and Bill in Denver, passing by frozen waterfalls on the way down. 

Connie had organised a get-to-gether with some of the staff Stuart worked with last year and I know he really enjoyed catching up with them again. One of the guys Stu worked with, Jim, had made a farewell video for Stuart last year, but Stu didn't get to see it, so he played it that night....it was great and such a lovely gesture.Goodbye Stuart

So a big thankyou to Connie and Bill for organising this, and of course all the delicious food.
Saturday we caught up with Janice who is part of the CITEL organisation.  It was great to spend the morning with her....she has done two exchanges already...one to Scotland and one to Australia and is hoping to do another one.
Then we remembered why we don't like cities....too much traffic, too many people, too many shops!!  We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to change my phone plan from T Mobile which is who I was with last year, to AT&T, as we learnt from our time in Canada during summer of 2013 that T Mobile doesn't work in Canada and wouldn't be effective in Alaska.  Hours and numerous AT&T shops later, we sorted it out!! We also bought a better camera lens for Stuart's camera, so we can hopefully get better wide angle shots as well as close ups of wildlife.
We finally got back to Bill and Connie's late afternoon and went out for a meal with them to a place we had been last year with them!
Sunday was our day of leisure to spend with Bill and Connie...after Stuart and Bill returned our hire car to Denver Int. Airport.  The hire car had been good to us for 6 weeks from Salt Lake City, Utah to Denver, Colorado, despite not having a spare tyre (which we found out 2 days before we dropped it off...even though we didn't need it!!), as it's always nice to have your independence.
So Sunday we spent helping Connie and Bill with a few computer things, laughed immaturely at their sign which means a whole different thing to us Australians....

downloaded some of their music onto the laptop (I love listening to John Denver telling us he'd rather be in Colorado...he knows what he's talking about!!), ate, drank, laughed, drank, laughed, drank,

Skyped Mum, Margaret and Mal and finally packed our bags for the big Alaskan adventure. Bill took us to the airport early on Monday morning to catch the plane to San Francisco....we were on our way! We can't thank Bill and Connie enough for their generous hospitality with Winter Park and their Moose Room in Littleton, Denver!!  They continue to make us feel so welcome and we really, really enjoy spending time with them and I have said it before, can't wait for them to come out to visit us next year!!  So it was farewell to Colorado...but I can't help but think we'll be back...especially after Stu won a season pass to Winter Park for next season...worth over $500!!!  Oh and I also learnt, (despite living in the US for nearly 16 months and posting a few letters in that time)....the stamp goes on the left hand side of an envelope in the US, not the right.  I think most people got the mail I sent within the US last year...even though I had the stamp on the wrong side every time!!! Nobody told me!!