ok a last few photos of chicago! the first one is of us on a boat - ive put it on there because it has a funny story! i was trying to take pictures of the scenery and had a pencil in my hand (sharp) and decided i wanted one of me and gav but when i grabbed him to get us in the photo i accidentally poked him in the eye with the pencil hence the look on his face, hehe, oops, still makes me chuckle now! anyway, the second day in chicago we went to the aquarium, which was really cool to see so many different sea species, fish, snakes, turtles, dolphins, whales, seals etc, god so many! saw some feeding times and a dolphin show so it was all good! oh and the lizards the giant one, gavs gone and i cant remember what the giant lizard thing was called! anyway, it was huge! we then went to the lincoln zoo (free so even better) which was cool, every type of animal from monkeys to birds to farm life, strange weather - one minute perfect sunshine, the next hail storms then back to sun! mad! so we looked around there for a bit which was nice! oh, gavs back kamoto dragons (not sure how to spell it!) we then went for a boat tour (first photo) at sunset which was nice, then we finished by going up the handcock tower so theres one of gav overlooking the city and me window cleaning - well we were running out of money by that time!! hehe!! chicago memories, windy, cold but not too cold, museums and animals, non stop and lots of chinese!! we both liked it, oh we went to navy pier too but had run out of energy for the fun fair plus it was way too expensive!

on to denver! we both loved denver, its small so easily walkable to everything, they have free buses, the mountains surround it so the scenery is beautiful, ahh denver! so the first pic, we spent our first afternoon just broosing around the city, went to the football stadium and just generally bummed around then just happened to fall into happy hour at one of the pubs! so here we are me with my long island ice tea (very nice) and gav with his super large beer! i had 2 drinks and was nearly on the floor!! the pub was cool too!

our second day in denver we had our first road trip of our travels - well a road trip if you call hiring a car out for the day a road trip but it was the nearest we were going to get! we went up to the red rock ampitheatre - the worlds only natural perfectly sounding acoustics ampitheatre - ive got a video of gav singing so you can listen for yourselves when get home! (pic of us in the ampitheatre) we then did a small hike around the ampitheatre - up to that point had never seen red rocks like it and they were so huge!! all the plants and birds were pretty cool too! the walk was really nice not too strenuous! we then drove along dinosaur ridge and along to aspen park where we stopped for lunch and had a great view of a mountain covered by yellow and green trees it just looked amazing!we drove through morrison and jeffersons creek and the colours were just amazing, the reds, purples, yellows, greens it was just beautiful! we stopped at a place called southpark which is an old mining town that has been refurbished to look as it did in the 1850s so that was pretty cool to look around you could really imagine people living there! the bar looked pretty cool some good nights there im sure! we tried original taffy and although gav liked it i thought it was pretty gross! after that we drove over hoover pass (top of the mountain spectacular views), and though alma, breakenbridge where there was snow all around! at one point we had to pull over because the view was so stunning, flat plains all around and snow capped mountains in the distance, then an hour later we were driving past snow! it was an incredible journey! on the way home we stopped for dinner in a place called georgetown which is a town that hasnt changed since the 1800s all very old looking and people live and work there in the buildings like they would have done years ago! we had dinner in a saloon! buffalo and yam very nice tasted like beef really! all good! we finally got back to denver at about 10.30pm after driving around the mountains for over 14 hours, it was an incredible day full of beautiful sights, we just loved denver! i think it was gavs favourite place overall!