Stanley

For my 28th birthday Kerri surprised me, and took me away for the weekend to The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. Right away I was intrigued with the idea that this place is really haunted and did my best google matching to find related stories about ghost sightings. I found a lot of hits about this topic and apparently room 407 is the most haunted room in the hotel. I told Kerri that we should request this room, but she wanted nothing to do with that.
We left for Estes Park around 11am on Sat after a nice breakfast and arrived around 12. We were a little bit early for our 4pm check in, so we drove around looking for a place to go hike and I saw this neat mountain that looked like it needed some climbers, so that's what we did.
After hiking we tried to study a little bit by St. Mary's Lake, but it was a little bit too windy for reading, so we headed into town. Kerri bought a gift for her friend that is 3 picture frames hooked together by a string. I bought some Keen sandals which were half off and feel great. We then ate some lunch at Subway and finally made our way to the Stanley Hotel.


The Stanley hotel is very impressive to look at and sits up on a hill side above the town with the famous red roof and white paint. Once we found our way to the entrance we checked into our room 312 and waited for a wedding coordinator to show us around (just in case Mexico doesn't work out). The lady that we spoke to was very nice and informative. The first room that we looked at would be able to hold around 300 people, this is where Kerri's friend Jenny had her reception.
The next room that she took us to was a little bit smaller and has a capacity of 150 people.

After our grand tour of the hotel, we made our way to the work out center downstairs to do a little cardio and lift some weights. This is a very updated gym with all of the latest equipment.

After working out we had to decide on where to eat dinner. We first looked at the menu at the Stanley and noticed that the prices were around 35 a plate, so we asked where some alternatives would be, and a server told us that one of Stanley's good friends decided to build a hotel directly across the town after the two got in a big argument and Stanley's friend said that he could build a better hotel. Anyway the server directed us to that hotel, but when we arrived there we found out that the hotel was hosting a function called fools in love, and kept trying to sell Kerri tickets to the event, but all Kerri wanted to know is if they were serving dinner.
When we finally found out that they were not serving dinner we were then directed to another place called Twin Owls Lodge. Once there we had a wonderful dinner. Kerri and I split a steak and a bottle of wine + cheese cake Yum.
That night was definitely a Stanley experience. Both Kerri and I went to sleep around 11pm and around 2am we were both wide awake b/c with the window open the ferocious winds were making our door bang, the windows were making sounds like they were going to break, and right when Kerri was about to close the window we both heard a sound like a moaning sound coming from outside. We were both freaked out, but once we closed the window and turned on the fan we both felt a little better, and were finally able to get to sleep.

The next morning we had a nice breakfast at a local diner, bought a kite at a flee market, and went for a nice hike. The kite did not hold up too well because the wind was still so strong.