Colorado River Trip Day 1

Day 0: Ana and I drove from Minneapolis to Denver where her friends Kofi and Sylvia let us stay at their place overnight. Kofi made us this amazing dinner!





Day 1: We began our day in Dinosaur Ridge, Colorado where we could see huge fossilized dinosaur tracks. We learned about the basic geological events that led to such fossils, and then we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. Sadly, I'm still not interested in dinosaurs.




In the headwaters of the Colorado River, we performed our first water studies. Each of the 6 times we did different tests, and day 1 I got to study water quality. The water was freeeeeeezing, but very clean.



After our water study, we had time to drive/hike through the mountains. I must say, I love mountains! The Rockies were still snow-capped, so the views were incredible and the weather was perfect. The hillsides were so pretty with red and green pines, but the red pines were actually dead. The whole mountain range has been infested with pine beetles, an invasive species that they can't get rid of. The dead trees present great concerns for future forest fires because they will help it spread much faster.

That night we drove to Hot Sulpher Springs where we relaxed in the pools of varying temperatures!