Road Trip to the Rockies

We've been home for 5 days now from our inaugural family road trip! My husband and I packed up our kiddos (along with every gadget, toy & snack imaginable) into our car and drove to Colorado to visit some dear friends of ours. We knew that it was a risk...how would our 4 year old, & an even bigger unknown, our one year old, do over 2000 miles in the car? We spent four days driving to get out there, stopping at a couple National Parks that were along the way. Coming home was more of a push, we planned for only two days to cover the same distance.

I am pleased to say that the trip was so rewarding. In many ways. But as far as our kids go, they really were fantastic travelers. Our son was pretty easy to keep entertained (thanks especially to the Wiens family for the DVD player & other car activities). I also purchased ahead of time some small gifts from the dollar bins at various stores and wrapped them up so that he would have little gifts to open before getting back into the car from a stop. He loved that. Especially cool were the glow-in-the-dark bracelets & necklaces that they could wear during the dusk/dark hours. We mostly tried to be checked into a hotel by dark, but that didn't always happen. Our daughter on the other hand, was entertained by all the snacks we kept coming! The Snack Trap came in handy, but for the most part, she was a mess since she had to feed herself while the car was in motion. We also listened to Charlotte's Web on CD as a family.

Somewhere in Utah...

Our first national park was Zion. We only stayed for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, and decided that we need to come back when we have more time to explore. It was beautiful! We did a short hike to Lower Emerald Pool, then got on the shuttle bus going the wrong direction! We'd wanted to ride to the end of the canyon (the whole valley floor is accessible by foot or shuttle bus), but apparently boarded the wrong bus. We noticed we were headed back to the entrance instead. Then we realized it was really an hour later than we'd thought it was (Utah is on Mountain Standard Time)...and decided we probably should just consider it fate & head back without seeing the rest of the canyon. Like I said...next time.

Not much left to Emerald Falls this time of year...

Even our little one hiked part of the trail!

We also stopped at Arches National Park, which was visually so stunning. We could see a lot of it from our car, and got out at the Windows to climb up and take some photos. The sky was so blue and the earth so red. I got a little carried away with my camera, it was just so striking.




We arrived at our friends' home in a beautiful corner of NW Colorado on Friday afternoon, the beginning of the Labor Day weekend. We spent the whole holiday weekend with them, and left early Tuesday morning. It was so good to see our friends in their new home (they've lived there a little over a year now). Even though they are in the Rockies, their town is in a valley, & surrounded by what looks like rolling green hills. Their closest peak is a popular ski resort. It is such an idyllic place, with all the open fields and a river running through the town too! A lot of people come there to ski, but it's a tourist destination year-round.


But enough about the town...we really went to visit our friends! I think the kids would've been happy to just hang around the condo and play together the whole time, but we had to get out and enjoy the outdoors, right? The first day we headed down one of the town's hot springs to go swimming. There were several pools there, all heated to different temperatures by the natural hot springs underground. There were lots of fun features in the pools too, like animals & slides for kids to climb on, a fast, tunnel slide for older kids, & even a climbing wall in one of the pools! We spent several hours relaxing and playing there.

Enjoying the kids' slide

That evening, we went to a Saturday evening church service with them. It was good to worship together with them in their new church home, since church is how we initially all met.

On Sunday we went to a ranch where a stock dog competition was being held (think: the movie Babe). A bunch of border collies had a chance to prove that they could herd a handful of yearling sheep. Definitely not something we see at home!

Baa-Ram-Ewe

The experience was pretty interesting, and the kids got to
pet some animals and make some butter out of cream.

Our daughter was totally mesmerized with any dog she could get near.
It's crazy to me how fascinated she is with them.

Afterwards we went for gelato downtown, at a cute little place where the owners (from Italy) know everyone's name and chat it up with all the customers. Yummy gelato too!

That night we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant where they give each of the kids a bit of dough to shape into whatever shape they want, then back it for them.


Our son really surprised us here, while we were standing in front waiting for a table to be seated at, he wandered over to the bar (all he saw of course, was a big screen TV with a football game on), climbed up into a seat & was chatting it up with the bartender and two other guys about who was playing in the game, who was winning, etc. By the time I caught up with him, the guys (who were totally cool & indulging his conversation) had filled him in on the game and told him they'd send updates to our table. It cracked all of us up, it was definitely not something I expected him to do, especially since he can be so timid in new situations. He is becoming quite a sports-spectator lately.


On our last day, we got everyone fitted up with a bicycle & gear and rode down to the square where the gondola takes people up to the top of the ski mountain. There were some activities to do in the square, but the real treat was the ride up and the view from the top. We ate our lunch up there & played a little in the grass before heading back down. From there, we rode our bikes along the river and went down to a popular wading/tubing spot. It was also close to the spring that the city was named after. It was such a relaxing day & a fun way to end our stay. We had a delicious tamale dinner & tried to get all the kids to bed early, since we all had to wake up to get to school, work, or California. Us adults stayed up a little later to eat dessert & finish a Bollywood flick we'd started earlier. Fun, fun!

These faces don't look worried at all, do they??


All of us together on the deck of the ski lodge

A gondola ride (is it pronounced GON-dol-a, or gon-DOL-a?)

Playing down at the river

The morning we left, our son woke up a couple of hours earlier than planned, with an upset stomach. He actually threw up several times before it was time to actually wake up. We felt so bad for him, but didn't have much choice in needing to get on the road and get driving back. Not the greatest way to say goodbye. It also was raining, so that didn't help either. But let's face it, it is never fun saying goodbye to friends that you care about. We really enjoyed our stay with them and were glad we had the opportunity to go. Thank you so much friends, for the hospitality, good conversation & laughter. We love you guys.

(btw, our son was feeling much better by that afternoon, had started eating again and even went swimming that evening...still not sure what caused it!)