Colorado Trip - Denver Botanical Gardens

On one of the days of our Colorado trip we went to Denver with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Nathan. One of our main stops was the Denver Botanical Gardens where they were hosting a huge collection of works by the glass artist Dale Chihuly. Chihuly creates amazing blown glass abstract sculptures with naturalistic, organic designs. They're really cool looking.

This whole display was so cool.

These little guys were everywhere there was water.

I wasn't completely sure if these planters were Chihuly pieces, but the looked like they fit in with everything else really well.

These were some of my favorites.

But these boats were my very favorite out of everything there.

Especially this one.

I actually have a lot more pictures from the Chihuly show, but I liked so many of them enough, that I decided they should go on my photo blog. You can find those HERE!

TIIA 13 (The Internet is Awesome)

Let's open with something so beautifully weird that must must be experienced. There is nothing to set up except to say that Aardman Animation recently joined up with an SFX company, Nathan Love, and this was their way of announcing it.



This Studio C sketch is hilarious. Especially when you find out what's really going on. :p



This video by Stuart Edge is great, not just for the awesome costumes and dancing, but looking at it as an editor, I'm just in awe of how perfectly it came together.



Sometimes when an artist releases a particularly great album, you fear that their next one might not be able to live up to the standard they set for themselves. That's what I worried about Sia after her amazing album, 1000 Forms of Fear. I had nothing to fear. This is the main single off her new album, This Is Acting. It's just as amazing as the last one.



Mike Tompkins everybody. He's too good.



I can guarantee that you've never heard the Star Wars theme like this before.



CoCo Jones is someone that my cousin and I really liked when she would show up as a guest on different Disney Channel shows, and she's very funny, but I think she's even better at singing! She's amazing!



Let's end this post on a blast from the past, I don't think I ever shared any of their videos on my blog, I think their biggest viral hits were going around before I ever started writing, but back in the day a few member of my family and I were captivated by the amazing vocal stylings of a group called the Voca People. They say that they are an alien race that communicate exclusively through song. Whatever they are, they're beyond amazing. Can I say that they are... "Out of this world?" I apologize. :p Anyway, they recently released a new video, and it could be their best yet. But it's Disney, so I'm biased. :p

Colorado Trip - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo - Part 2

After the harrowing experience just getting to the zoo, (Which you can read about HERE) we had an awesome time. This zoo is so cool. The whole thing is built into the side of a mountain, so as you walk through the zoo, you're walking up the mountain and the view just keeps getting better. This was the first view after we got to an overlook.

As I said in the last post, the main draw of the zoo, besides the views, is the fact that you can pet the giraffes. They have one of the biggest giraffe populations in the US. They also have an indoor area, and in there they were training young giraffe.

They also have okapis. :)

Like I said in my first post, these things are everywhere. :)

View #2.

Part of the giraffe exhibit as seen from above.

This reminded me of Lost. :)

View #3.

The giraffes weren't the only things you could pet. They also had some wallabies out and about.

We all had to take turns getting our pictures taken petting them. :)

These two ladies even had a baby out for visitors to pet! :)

It was adorable!

The colors aren't the greatest in these pictures, the lighting was strange in many places in the reptile house. It was very cool looking, but it didn't make for very good pictures. This room was the coolest. They had snakes in these tanks with all different colors of glass rocks, along with pieces of art. It was so unique. I wish more of my pictures had turned out.

Another visitor to the zoo walked up to this little guy and handed him a piece of popcorn. He took it!

If you look closely, you can see a mountain lion, which Sasha is photographing.

That's all my pictures from the zoo. If you still want more, I have a few more of my best pictures on my photography blog, which you can find HERE. I still have more pictures to come from the rest of the trip, so stay tuned for those!

Colorado Trip - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

One of the best days we spent in Colorado was the day that we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. And it was also one of the worst days. Why, you ask? Well, get ready for a story.

For starters, this particular zoo is 3 hours away from my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Nathan's house. So we had a long day of driving. That's not the bad part though. This zoo is TOTALLY worth a three hour drive. It might actually be the best zoo I've ever been too. Only the Henry Doorly Zoo can rival it in sheer awesomeness.

No, the reason that the three hour drive was so bad, was that my iPod died that morning. Like flat out gave up the ghost. Plus, my iPad had also died on the way to Colorado, so we had absolutely no music for the entire three hour drive to Colorado Springs. We still have no idea why those things died. Maybe the altitude? Who knows. The iPod came back to life a few days later, but the iPad never recovered.

Anyway, we had no music for three hours. Nothing. Thankfully Shaina had brought a book to read, so for three hours she read Wuthering Heights to us. Though I still have no idea what Wuthering Heights is about. Was there a ghost? I can't remember. It must not have been the most riveting book. Sorry, Shaina. At least it kept me occupied at the time. :p

But all that was still not too bad. The real problems were just getting started. When we finally made it to Colorado Springs the car's temperature warning light came on, and it was sounding alarms. Now, my car had been having problems like this before. We had tried to leave for Colorado the week before, and it died with smoke pouring out of the hood before we'd even made it to Shelby. But I'd gotten it fixed and we left the next week. There should have been no further problems!

So now, in addition to the blaring heat alarms, the GPS isn't taking us to the right spot, and we went up a steep hill ending up in what appeared to be some sort of gated community where a bunch of rich people lived. To top it all off, Sasha was starting to feel sick! So I called Uncle Nathan and he walked me through what to do. He thought it was just overheating from driving up and down mountains all day. So I dumped water into the car, at his direction, trying to cool it down. He told us to find the zoo and just let the car cool down all day. If it didn't start he'd come get us, but if it did start, we should just drive as far as we can, and if it dies, he could meet us wherever we ended up.

Since we couldn't just leave the car sitting in what is quite possibly a rich person's giant driveway, I had to drive a little more. I knew the zoo had to be nearby, because even when the GPS is off, it's not off by much, so we slowly left the posh little village, taking a different turn, a little further up the steep hill. This turned out to be the right place, so I parked the car. Sasha was still feeling bad, but she said she'd probably be fine after awhile, so we just walked slowly, and eventually she came around.

After the zoo we did manage to drive back to Uncle Nathan and Aunt Ruth's but we had to drive so slowly to prevent it from overheating that it was like 9 or 10 o'clock that night before we got home. And the next day we took the car to a mechanic and left it there for a few days to rack up another huge bill, and even then it wasn't fixed completely. I had to have the transmission replaced when we got back to Harlan. All in all that summer, that car cost me like $3000. I let it live for another year before replacing it, which is more than it deserved.

And that was why the day was so horrible. Now, after all that, that day was probably still my favorite day of the trip. And here's why.

I got to feed a giraffe. We went to the zoo to pet the giraffes, but unbeknownst to me, Shaina bought a bunch of lettuce for me to feed to them. It was so awesome. :)

This is what makes this zoo is so amazing.

This is the reason we drove three hours to go to this particular zoo. When I was 18, my parents sent me to a camp/seminar thing in Colorado Springs, and on one day of that trip, part of the group I was with had gone to a zoo, and I remembered petting a giraffe. When my cousins and I decided to go to Colorado, I figured out where that zoo had been, and we made a point to go there, so we could all pet them. It was so worth the trouble. :)

This is the kind of joy you can only get from contact with these magnificent creatures. :)

I'm going to make this the end of this post. I was just going to do a picture post, but then I remembered what happened that day, and that story ended up taking up all my time. I'll do another post soon, and I might even do a post on my photo blog. I think I have enough good material from the zoo trip. Keep an eye out for that!