Mesa Verde

So, a belated report on the late-in-the-summer vacation we took over Labor Day. Remember: our first camping trip of the year (boo). Also, I have been agitating to visit Mesa Verde for YEARS. Five years, in fact, which was the last time we visited Mesa Verde. (The kids were too small to appreciate it then. Also, it was winter and we didn't get to go on a guided tour.) (I also agitate a lot for guided tours, since M. has a low opinion of them and I happen to think they're worthwhile and also have fond memories of them from when I was a kid.)

So, maybe I had a lot riding on this particular little mini-vacation.

It didn't begin well:

Si's makeshift shrine to Costi.

It was a cloudless sunny day across the entire state, I swear. However, we pulled up to the campsite in this:

Imagine also being starving.

I began to think maybe I had pushed the vacation gods a little too far. I had vacation hubris. I had overextended myself, and now the entire family was going to pay.

Fortunately, it is the desert and the next day dawned warm and sunny. The kids threw themselves into it, as I always knew they would which is why I wanted to come in the first place. It was very gratifying. The adults enjoyed it, too.

We took the "Adventure Tour" with the two 30-foot ladder climbs. I worried about Helen - silly me.

We went on not one, but two guided tours. The kids, poking through the oakbrush around our campsite (okay, fine, shooting each other with airsoft guns), found a kiva.

No matter how many times I see these, I'm always stunned.

We commemorated our trip with lots of gift store purchases, and for once I didn't panic over the Spending of Money. It was a great trip.

Not the kiva we "discovered," but cool nonetheless.

The only low point, other than pulling up in the rain, was that not one, but two (2) separate people on two (2) separate days asked if I was buying something for my granddaughter. Helen. Who is, for the record, seven.

I would have had to be 13 when I had Helen's mother. Or possibly fifteen.

Then M., trying to reassure me, said, "No. You don't look like a grandmother. It's your hair."

My hair?

Wearing a youthful baseball cap. To cover my aged hair.

Still, a very good trip, fuller than it seems possible it could be.

So much to say, so little of note

Sometimes I let this thing lag for so long I wonder if it's even worth it trying to catch back up.

Didn't care for the mineral water smell

And then I'm like, who am I kidding? What else would I do with all our pictures if I didn't have a blog?

Awesome glasses from a geocache

Where else would I get to talk about how we went to Yellowstone and saw four measly bison, petting-zoo elk (technically they were wild, in the way that squirrels are wild), lots of bubbling mud, some waterfalls, and a bear? It was rushed but fun.

The kids enjoyed it, more or less.

I think they liked the legos they brought along the best, and then the lake options at the cabin where we stayed, and Yellowstone Park features came in a dusty third, but, well, they can say they've been there.

And then I could tell you about how we've been back for a whole week. How I am a fresh expert on the return-to-work experience. First two days: learning how to do your job again. Second two days: putting out all the fires that erupted while you were out. Last day: whoo, it's Friday. Or how on Friday I rode my bike to work, which is almost becoming a Friday habit. Or how tomorrow we have eight boys ten and under arriving for a sleepover. On a work night. I am crazy.

There. All caught up. Now in my next post I can talk about how I can't get my mind around the fact that I've been doing this parenting thing for a whole decade.

Guess where we're going?

Breakfast:


Lunch:
Dinner:
We're going backpacking. Whoohoo! Slash kill me.

I kid. It should be fun! Although I am kind of looking forward to coming home even before we get there.

Mt Bierstadt

Happy July! We had a great fourth of July--and, actually, all last week was great, in a tiring, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of way. Hubs was in Alaska last week (jetlag + all-day nights = hel-lo, sleep problems!) but my folks were here, so I would walk in the door at the end of the day and the house would smell like dinner. Then, at bedtime, I would get the kids' teeth brushed and faces washed and then kiss them goodnight and go read my own book while my parents put them to bed. It was HEAVENLY. And for mysterious reasons I was completely flat-out exhausted during the entire week. I think it was like that thing where you're running around, doing one thing after another, busy-busy-busy but keeping up just fine, until you make the mistake of sitting down. Then you're toast.

Then on the Fourth (Hubs was home--yay) we packed our cold weather gear and headed for the mountains. It was overcast and drizzling in Denver but the mountains were beautiful. The kids would like to go on record that they did not APPROVE of doing a hike, but DID IT ANYWAY for the sake of family harmony. Point taken, kiddos.

Helen started off game but wary:

After two solid miles of up, though, she got a little discouraged:

Even if she was, as many passersby noted, the most fashionable hiker on the mountain:

And then after lunch she got to head back down. So she was happy.

Si, on the other hand, was "tricked" and "forced" into climbing to the top:

And if he was maybe a little bit proud that he climbed a whole mountain by himself he certainly wasn't going to let on. Much. My big guy.

So What Does Twenty Hours in a Car with Three Kids Look Like, Anyway?

Kinda like this: we leave late (ALWAYS). By the time we're pulling out of town, at 4:30, the rain/snow has already begun. Craaaaap, I think. The kids are excited but remarkably good. One is READING. One is doing puzzles. One is playing Leapster. The key point: they are QUIET (even if one wakes from a little doze around Colorado Springs and asks, "Mom! Are we almost to Legoland?!")

Past Colorado Springs, it is dark (and snowing). The drive is slow (and snowing). But the kids are asleep (hallelujah). And the snow, it is blinding, but it isn't sticking, so we keep going. We go over Raton Pass into New Mexico, and it is starting to stick but at this point stopping isn't an option. By the time we get twenty minutes into New Mexico, there is no snow at all, and we pat ourselves on the back.

New Mexico passes in a dream. Later the kids will keep forgetting to count New Mexico when they list the states they've been in for this trip (and, ok, one kid's list goes like this: "Arizona--Legoland, California--New Zealand--what's that other one, mom? oh! and Fort Collins").

In Arizona we stop to geocache (a lot) and have some French Toast. Just before we get to California we stop again, to eat all of our Clementines. The kids are still being good, amusing themselves and mostly not fighting. Although the parents mostly mention this in the context of "Hey! You kids have been SO GOOD so far! Don't mess it up now!"

We geocache across Death Valley:

Stretch the legs, solve a puzzle, get new/ new-to-you toys: what's not to love?

We hit LA just before sunset on the second day. I'd like to say we drove directly to the coast:

It was approximately 35 degrees.

But instead we descended upon the aunt of M and my SIL, completely covered her living room floor with sleeping gear, and got ready to do things like this:

Note: $14 facepaint job was gone within three hours.

All in all, not bad. The one-hour drive to Legoland the next day was VASTLY harder.

We interrupt this vacation

For a short message from work. That message is: you're still employed (thankfully), so get in here.

After five days of Christmas break, full of food, family, fun, and inexplicably huge amounts of wine, I'm heading back in today and tomorrow. Part of me is sort of clutching my head and groaning (you want me to do whhhat?) Part of me is glad to get away from the struggles with the Wii and the Leapster. And the sensible, logical part of me is glad to get back to the desk and be reminded of things before I take another five days off and forget it all completely.

Here's where I would like to do a short meditation on the value and beauty of work, only it's before six a.m. and I'm too groggy for that. Instead I'll just wish everyone a happy day--especially those of you who don't have to sit at a desk today.

Tink, tink, tink, tink

...tink, tink, tink, tink, tink...

So, Silas found a pick (an ice pick? a climber's pick?) within about an hour of hour arriving at the cabin on Friday night. He finally, and reluctantly, relinquished it at approximately 1 pm on Sunday, when we got in the car to go home (Word of WisdomTM: ice picks + children + car = no). For those of you that can do the math, that's, oh, about 132 straight hours of hammering. All of the rocks around the cabin we stayed in now have little white marks on them. Also all of the rocks along the creek at the bottom of the hill. That kid has persistence, and also, apparently, gold fever. That's what he was doing, by the way: mining for gold. (Only 149 years too late! Sorry, kiddo!)

But! It was a wonderful weekend, nevertheless. We stayed at one of the cabins around the Glen Isle resort, which is a moldering old marvel of a historical lodge, with cheap cabins, lots of roads and trails, and easy access to the north fork of the Platte (and easier access to the little creek that empties into the north fork, which was a load off for the lazy parents among our group, which was all of us.) Hubs worked, I read the old magazines laying about the cabin, and my sister-in-law slept. Helen colored like a madwoman, at least when she wasn't out monitoring Si's progress. Their cousin kept tabs on the comings and goings of all visitors.

Every so often Hubs and I wish we had the means to buy some property in the mountains--to get ourselves a real summer cabin, something we can return to again and again, and pass down to the kids, a tangible piece of what I sometimes call their Colorado Heritage (usually while dragging them up a glacier or down a canyon). When I was growing up, I spent a few weeks every summer at the summer house of a friend, swimming, boating, and running wild in the woods, and it breaks my heart, sometimes, that we don't have the time or the means to provide this kind of summer to our kids. So far we haven't had any luck finding them friends with summer cabins, and short of winning the lottery, there's no way we're ever going to own a cabin. (Damn real estate bubble hasn't burst enough).

Then we go have a weekend the one just passed, and I start to think: who needs a damn cabin, anyway? It would be nothing but work, all summer long (that's what my friend's parents were doing, after all, while we swam and boated and ran wild. They were scraping and painting and floating out docks and fixing outboard motors and digging out privies and cooking, cleaning, and fixing ALL SUMMER LONG). Meanwhile, for about a hundredth of the price, we can go rent a cabin on the weekends we actually have available, and give our kids the gift of the whole entire state.

So. I haven't totally given up on the dream of a mountain cabin, but given the circumstances, I'm thinking we may actually have found a workable alternative.

Exit Canyon City

We're back from our camping trip to Canyon City and I believe I have to retract a few statements. The weather, for example, was fine. Not too hot, just rainy enough to give us an excuse to go into town for late-afternoon margaritas, and nowhere near the Federal Supermax Prison. We got a very nice campsite, despite the fact that the campground had a pool, a game room, and evening kid movies. I may have turned up my nose at such accouterments in the past. I may even have been slightly annoyed at how these highlights essentially dictated Si's conversation for the entire 2-day trip ("What time is it? Is it 6:30 yet? How about now? I want to watch Finding Nemo" and "Can we go to the game room now? I'll go by myself. Why not? Will somebody go with me to the game room? I want to spend my quaaaarters. When can we go to the game room?") But the actual campsite location--at the top of a hill with 360 views, backing into pinyon-juniper woodland with plenty of room for exploring (and, thanks to the heated & fully plumbed bathrooms, pleasantly lacking in human feces)--made up for nearly all of this.

Photos:















The Royal Gorge: Biggest Tourist Trap In the West!

It's a big canyon:



















With a bridge!





(Note Helen's clenched fist. She wasn't totally convinced by the bridge's physics)









Under the bridge: the canyon. Yours for only $24 a person (children 4 and older $19)! (HACK)

We also petted the crabby goats, observed the mangy "wildlife" in pens, rode the train, the trolley, the incline railway, and the aerial tram. We had some "homemade" ice cream (cooked up on site from great tubs of ice cream syrup), watched people ride the skycoaster, and got thoroughly tired.

The next day, we did a little wine tasting at the Abbey in town and felt much better.

HOT (wither)

It's too hot to post. Not that my brain has proved fertile enough to produce two posts in two days before ANYWAY, but I had to get a mention of the heat in there somehow.


Ohio-cool and pleasant compared
to Canon City

Also, since it's so hot, we've decided to go camping this week. In the heat. Because we are idiots. There are hundreds--thousands--of magnificent campsites up in the cool mountains
mere hours to the west of us, but are we going there? No. No, we are not. We let ourselves get talked into camping in Canon City (of the Federal Supermax Prison fame).

Suck. Note to self: let's suggest that we camp on Long's Peak next. On January 3rd, perhaps. Because why use altitude gradients to your advantage when you can add extreme to extreme for maximum discomfort?

Okay, enough sarcasm. I promised photos:














Getting ready to let Painty go back to his business
















Painty. The Painted Turtle.














Nothing like a backpack to help move the day along.

That's all. Next time: bathroom photos! (Because our other news? After a year of misery and construction, we finally have three fully functional bathrooms again)