Smooth Rider

We got up today and had breakfast at the hotel. Lots of blue skies. By the time we got to the stables at 9:30 the clouds had settled in and the rain began. We put on some ponchos and mounted up. Lisa rode a horse named Rose while Pat took the reigns of Hank. Lisa immediately began flirting with our guide, a young cowboy named Nick from Boulder. We rode for two hours on a trail through the aspen groves. It quit raining shortly after the ride started. After the ride we took the sandwich they provided back to our room and ate. After that we went into town and rode the gondola up to the top of Aspen Mountain. On the ride back down, we went through a pretty good shower. There was an open air market on one of the streets and some dude was playing an accordion for tips. We walked around some more and then went into a coffee shop called the ink café. Pat had a chai tea while Lisa had iced mocha. Then the accordion player came in and sat down near us and he started flirting with Lisa. He asked us if we lived in Aspen. Lisa said no, we’re from Alabama. He said he’d never met anyone from Alabama. He asked her if she knew what a pluot was. Then we left and went back to the room to take a nap. We saw where the two Mississippi football teams lost by a combined 68-7. Before dinner we went back to the Maroon Bells. The weather had cleared up and we got some good pics. Then we went to dinner at Little Annie’s Eating House. Lisa had beef stew. Pat had grilled salmon, greek rice and cole slaw. For desert we had a brownie, smothered with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate syrup. It was all good. There was some lady sitting next to us that Pat thinks was a soap opera star. After we paid the bill, Lisa noticed the waitress had not charged us for our desert so we told her and she said, “Don’t worry about it, ya’ll are a sweet couple.”