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birthday on haunted hill

After taking the scenic route back from Moab, we made it back to Denver by mid-evening. Our friends the Yees were kind enough to host us during our time in Denver, and they brought us to a great sushi restaurant and neighborhood gelato shop.

The next morning, fortified and rested up, we headed north to Estes Park, Colo., where our friend Aaron was hosting a surprise fortieth birthday party for our friend Pamela at The Stanley Hotel, perhaps best known as the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining. (The Kubrick movie was filmed in Oregon, but a television mini-series version of the book was filmed at the Stanley. There’s a channel in the Stanley’s guest rooms that play both in constant rotation.)

Aaron had started planning this event way in advance, sending out the first Evite back in January. Friends from all over the country attended — from Colorado, Arizona and D.C. — and Pamela’s family flew in a few days early from North Carolina.

Rob and I tend to be pretty plugged-in and open about what we’re up to, and as the date of the party approached, it proved surprisingly challenging to keep mum. On Twitter and Flickr, we maintained “radio silence” about the specifics of our whereabouts as best we could. There were a few slip-ups, though, and for a time we were worried about having spoiled the surprise.

But everything turned out fine — wonderful, even. And Pamela was indeed surprised.

Photos from the Party »