Colorado “Vacation” - Thoughts Aloft

edit: Fixed Broken Image Links

One thing I love about my job is always getting to go different places and places I’ve never been to before but more times than not, going to those places means the airport and hotel. We (my flying partner and I) don’t always get a chance to explore the cities or surrounding areas but I always take advantage of those opportunities when I do get them, even if it’s just a couple of hours walking the city streets and playing tourist.

When I went to work this past Friday, I had no idea I would get a mini vacation in Colorado. On Saturday, we finished for the day in Hayden, Colorado and stayed at a hotel in Steamboat Springs. We got to the hotel around 4pm so I was able to walk around downtown Steamboat Springs and some of the trails around the Yampa River.

Downtown Steamboat Springs

Yampa River

Yampa Valley

Aerial view of Yampa Valley and Steamboat Springs

On Sunday, we flew to White Plains, New York (NYC area), St. Louis, Missouri, and back to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, Colorado (Denver area). We flew 8.2 hours that day which set us up for part 2 of our Colorado vacation. We can only fly 10 hours in a rolling 24 hour period and we have to be able to look back to the same time the previous day and not exceed 10 hours of flight time. We departed for White Plains around 9:30 a.m. MST and landed around 3:00 p.m. EST. We landed in Broomfield around 8:30 p.m. Sunday night, so we legally shown around 7:00 a.m. on Monday but because of 10 in 24, we would have only been able to fly 1.8 hours before having to sit until the flight time from our Hayden-White Plains dropped off our rolling 24 hour clock (it’s confusing, I know). Because of this we didn’t report for work until 3:00 p.m. MST on Monday which gave us all morning to explore. We drove up to Nederland, Colorado and hiked around the Barker Meadow Reservoir and grabbed lunch in Boulder on our way back to Broomfield.

Our day of flying on Sunday

Driving to Nederland

Barker Meadow Reservoir

Baker Meadow Reservoir

Barker Meadow Reservoir