A Birthday in Estes Park

Happy 40th birthday, Ryan!! 

After a lazy morning, we headed into town to explore Estes Park.  It is such a quaint little downtown with lots of candy and ice cream shops mixed with souvenirs and restaurants.

After a pizza lunch at Bob and Tony's Pizza (very good!), Caleb got some taffy at The Taffy Shop.  It is the only taffy shop in town that actually makes its own taffy right in the store.  It was good taffy too!

The main street downtown had traffic signals and crosswalk signs, but they still had crossing guards at many of the intersections.  The crossing guards would sometimes stop traffic in all directions and yell that everyone can cross in any direction, including diagonal.

We discovered a riverwalk behind some of the shops!

When our exploring was done (and our parking meters were expiring), we stopped off at the Sundae Saloon for some ice cream.  We had raved about it so much after our hike that Mom and Dad wanted to try it too.  The Sundae Saloon not only has delicious ice cream, but they also have a square ice cream scoop.  Square ice cream is so fun!  Unfortunately, they were out of hot fudge (which is very disappointing for a place who has Sundae in their name!) so I didn't get to find out if they truly do have the best sundaes in the world or if I was just desperately hungry the other day.

Back at the cabin, Rodney saw a deer just hanging out in our yard.  Deer are everywhere!

Ryan opened some birthday presents and then we went to a birthday dinner at Ed's Cantina.

We took the riverwalk from the car to the restaurant.  Caleb decided to make a serious face before entering the "funway".

But disco lights in a tunnel made for lots of fun!

Caleb and Ryan playing Riverwalk instruments

Birthday dinner

Mom and Dad took a stroll down the Riverwalk after dinner while the rest of us walked the trail around Estes Lake.

We were hopeful to see some elk at the lake (hopefully not aggressive, though!), but all we saw were a bunch of geese.

It was a beautiful (and long) walk around the lake and the sunset was gorgeous today!

The sun has set on Ryan's 30's and on our vacation now.  The next 2 days will just be driving home.  We all had such a wonderful time filled with many adventures and, most of all, a lot of quality time as a family.  We couldn't ask for more!