Aspen, CO: Seth's Wedding

After a little bit of confusion as to where we were supposed to be meeting for the wedding we ended up canceling our 2nd night at Ami's Acres and luckily booked a last minute night at the St. Moritz Lodge which is a beautiful and very reasonably priced hostel in downtown Aspen, only several blocks from the site of the reception. Thanks to our zippy Kia Optima red rental car we were able to arrive ahead of schedule for once. Aspen is quite the place! Beautiful scenery and architecture, warm sunny weather, and a constant stream of those cottony seed things that makes it look like it's snowing in summer!  What could be better!? We walked over to the site of the reception, the Aspen Historical Society building, and met up with Seth and Brittany, long time friends of Kim's from her Freshman year of college in Denver. After some catching up it was time for Seth and his groomsmen to leave and time for all the guests to hop on a charter bus that would take us up to the stunning Maroon Bells mountains. This is where the ceremony took place and we couldn't have imagined a more scenic place for a wedding! 

The ceremony was simple and beautiful, and one of the highlights besides the amazing views had to be the shoes. Everyone, we mean everyone, in the wedding party wore Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers (Seth's favorites). It was awesome. After the ceremony it was back on the bus (and after a quick stop to see a bear in the woods right off the road) back to the historical society for the reception. With Seth being a chef the food was incredible! The wedding cake was topped with a VW bus, (also Seth's favorite- he owns 2) and the night was filled with dancing, laughing, a little bit of Jim Beam, and more dancing. Eventually we went downtown for some more fun with friends old and new. It was a great night- we even snuck off and caught the end of an awesome Grateful Dead cover band!

We checked out of our hostel at noon and have been hanging out by the (heated) pool ever since- it's now 3 o'clock!  Time to plan our next moves. We'll be heading back to Rifle, CO to spend another night at Seth's parents (cause they're so great!) and then we'll most likely be booking a room in a hotel back in Grand Junction for the next few days while we await the fate of our big yellow, 4 wheeled friend.  We'll probably be able to write some blog backlogs of our Yosemite Valley adventures- lucky you, you reader of this blog! Cross your fingers for the Zinger and stay tuned- the single biggest decision of our trip will have to be made tomorrow afternoon...