Sunday was B’s actual birthday. We slept until ten and went for Mexican breakfast with three of the crew. On our way out of town for the day, we stopped by two more friends’ house to deliver beer and fajita meat and see their–gasp!–basement. (Texans don’t have those.)

We went west through Loveland, which got progressively hippier as we drove. A head shop had many stoner icons, such as Jay and Silent Bob, painted on the exterior. I also saw an actual totem pole. We backtracked to Devil’s Backbone after we passed it, but we didn’t do any hiking.

The drive through the Rockies followed the river, which was wide, shallow, and quick-moving. Much faster than us–I frequently pulled over to let other cars pass.

The Stanley Hotel charged ten dollars for parking. There was a café at the lower-level entrance and a tour sales office. All the tours were sold out or had one ticket left. In the ladies’ bathroom, with its black-and-white checkered tiles, I learned that Dumb and Dumber had also been filmed there.

After taking in the view from the main lobby upstairs, I had to check the Whiskey Bar for the moon landing newspaper page, and it was right where it should be.

We landed on the moon!

I bought a red rum shot glass in the gift shop. We went out the main entrance and walked through the rain past the hedge maze.

We went to TripAdvisor’s #1 restaurant in Greeley for dinner. The less said, the better. To be fair, the #1 restaurant in our closest big town is in a hotel, because no one ever leaves the hotel, so maybe we shouldn’t take restaurant recommendations from TripAdvisor. This particular restaurant had stopped carrying any local beers, and the pizza we didn’t eat became road food for my long drive the next day. We closed the place down, then stood in front of a convenient store to wait for our uber, my dark trench coat straight out of Silent Bob’s stylebook.