Colorado and A date

This past weekend Brian and I packed up and headed off to Colorado to look at places to live and to check out the area where he will be interning. Let's just say we drove 1200 + miles, spent close to 24 hours in our little car driving, heard several songs multiple times, and got more questions then answers.
We left on Friday in our little rental car. Seriously this car was little.....but it got great gas mileage until we hit the windy state of Wyoming on our way home then it dropped fast since we were really being hit with an average of 30 mph winds.

We got lucky that I was able to leave a little early from school and we got to our hotel around 9:30 pm. This was definitely a great little hotel to stay at for the price that we got it at and the location not to mention we got breakfast. We would definitely recommend it to anyone.
The next day we got up nice and early and headed out Apartment hunting, which will begin our alphabet dates. I saw someone start doing dates based on the alphabet to help make you try new things and I loved it especially since Brian and I will have more time in the next coming weeks. We decided to start it on the trip and had some fun plans but they got lost in some frustration. Let's just say the people at the apartments were super helpful as we first started out. We saw the tiniest out-dated apartment first and were quoted $970 a month for rent. We then headed to our next location to only be told they don't lease for 3 months. This made it so we started a phone call frenzy to double check the places we had written down. Although some did 3 month leases they didn't have any available for when we needed them, then others told us they did them and then others didn't even consider it. So we headed out with an updated list and hit some more places. We were feeling really good about two places. The Bentley and Westhills if you wanted to know. When we decided to take in some lunch and had a yummy sandwich at Great Harvest. (We originally planned to make it fit our A day but we were starving and had limited options close in case we wanted to go back to an apartment.) We discussed a few things and then finished lunch and decided to go refresh our minds on one location. When we got there we looked at the papers we had been given and noticed a little fine print part that hadn't been mentioned....a 3 month lease was an option but at a cost of an extra $125 a month. Now we made it very clear we were only going to be in the area for 3 months and we were now realizing our discussion making was being made on the wrong prices. So we quickly pulled out the numbers for the other two places that we were considering and low and behold when pushing with the right questions all the prices jumped $120-$150 dollars. Can we say ouch!!!! It was a lot and was very frustrating. So we decided to leave the apartments behind and head out on the drive Brian would be making to work.
It was a pretty drive with some really cool landmarks from older mines. I should have pulled out the camera but I was not in the best mood when we started out. Anyway, we got to the little town of Empire and it was a quaint little town of 420 people or so and the mine is suppose to be a little past it. We decided to stop and get a shake at the fun little shop in the middle of town. (This is where we were informed of the population number.)

If you ever get to Colorado, the drive up here could be a fun out of the way little stop. It had a table with rocks to play tic-tac-toe, I guess during the summer they get over populated by a group of Hippies (as Brian called them) that camp out the whole summer in a field and have music concerts. This little shop lifted our spirits over a nice thick huge Reese's Shake. But I want to go back and be daring to try some chocolate covered bacon or the hamburger that is a hamburger with peanut butter, strawberry jam and bacon. They had lots more things that would be fun to try to like fried mac and cheese. It was a really popular place when we were there even though they were in Mud Season (the time between the slopes closing and Memorial Day).
When we left here we felt better and had created a new game plan for when we got home. So we headed back to the hotel and continued our date by taking A nap, it was really needed, we then worked on a paper for Brian, and headed to Applebee's to eat some dinner. We were able to laugh and relax while others did some Karaoke and we enjoyed some yummy food and some time to relax.
It was then time to go back to the hotel. I had a major headache for some reason and promptly crashed. Brian watched a little TV and then went to sleep.
The next morning we got up and ready around 8 am, grabbed some breakfast, packed up, checked out, and got on the road by 9:40 am. I drove all but an hour home so that Brian could study for his four finals that he had between Monday night and Tuesday morning. We will warn you, if you drive to Colorado or back from there to Utah DO NOT go to the Subway near Rawlings. They only want to ripe you off. We were over charged for our sandwich regardless of how much we fought about it and it was all I could do but to tell the girl to give me a real serving of the vegetables I was asking for since she seriously barely put on a half a handful of spinach. Just do yourselves a favor and go a little further down the road if you want Subway and see if that one is better. Our guess is it is.
Overall we had a fun trip and it felt really relaxing on the way home. It reminded me how much I enjoy road trips. Brian and I use to take them all the time before we got super busy. Now we are ready to go on one again. Here are a few pictures I was able to take at one point with the sunset.

Nature can really be relaxing to a soul. At least it is to mine. Now to just start our new plan and see where it leads us.....hopefully to a place that is a little cheaper then $1000 a month.