Colorado - day two (Raton to Estes Park)

When we woke up Sunday morning, I had to step outside to the car for something and it was still pretty early.  The sun wasn't quite up all the way yet.  As I started walking I noticed the mountains behind the town, and then it hit me.  That smell.  That freshest air you'll ever smell if you live in a big suffocating city.  The pine, cedar, fir and spruce all rolled into one big clean, mountainous air smell.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  My goodness it had been way too long in my life since I had smelled that smell.

It's pretty silly that we get in the car in Raton to head out, and we stop after driving 20 minutes to get this picture.  But I have pics of my brother and I at various ages doing the same thing, so we had to.  This was a very tough traveling day.  We all kept trying to stay in touch and get to places at the same time, and it just wasn't working.  I finally stopped feeling guilty that everyone always had to wait for us.  

I haven't even mentioned the crisis we went through a few days before leaving.  Zoe, our cat, has thyroid problems and has to have special food and can't eat ANYTHING but that food or she doesn't eat.  She got super thin before we figured out what was wrong with her.  When we had gone to Montreal for our anniversary a month before, we left all the pets with the vet, as we've always done when we went out of town.   Zoe didn't eat much of anything the whole time we were gone (4 days).  So I was pretty concerned about leaving her for 10 days.  I decided to call the vet the Wednesday before we left to see if he could help alleviate my fears.  (My mom kept telling me, "it's not like she will let herself starve to death!")  Well, the vet did not help matters.  He voiced his concern that she might not eat, and that it could lead to all sorts of really bad health problems for her in the long run if that happens.  I said I guess I could come home early if that happens, but I stupidly though he would say, oh it won't come to that.  He instead said, "Yes, I think that would be a good plan to have."  WHAT?  You wait until I call YOU, and voice your concerns two days three days before we leave?  I called back the next day and asked, "what about an IV if it comes to that?" and was told if she was already in a weakened state from not eating for three or four days they wouldn't be able to safely put her under to put in an IV.  

I went into total panic mode at work at that point.  I remembered my neighborhood friend Allyssa (who moved a year ago), had given props on Facebook to her awesome pet sitters, Mike and Eddie.  I texted her that I had an emergency - could she give me their number?  She did and I called them and explained my problem.  They came over Thursday night for us to meet them and so they could meet the pets and find out exactly what kind of care we needed for them.  They agreed to come three times a day, so we kept all three of them at home.  The cost was a little more than what we would have paid at the vet, but we were just so happy they would do this for us on short notice we didn't care.  

So when we were driving through Denver, and Mike texted me that Zoe was indeed eating and using the litter box, that I didn't have anything to worry about...I broke down and cried big tears of thankfulness that we found them.  I will fill in more about Mike and Eddie as I go, especially when I write about getting back home.  They are amazing guys.  

I don't have too many pictures from this day.  We were awed to see views like this one below as we started the forever-seeming drive from Loveland to Estes Park (why does the last half hour of a 12-hour drive seem to last three hours, at least.)  The boys were nonstop complaining by then and even I became too beaten down to notice the vistas or take any pictures.  My brother called to see where we were and I answered the phone with, "If I don't get out of this car soon and spend a little time away from my children I will spend the next five days in a padded room.  Or jail."  

We finally arrived and it was just beautiful.  My parents had stayed there about 5 previous times.  They stayed in a cabin next door on their own, and the rest of us shared a huge, awesome cabin.  The Fall River runs all the way through town, and our balcony hung out over it.  We heard this rushing sound while unpacking the car, and realized it was the river.  They'd had a record snow fall, and most of this river is pure snowmelt.  I took one look at it (keep in mind what a long driving day it had been) and burst into tears and said, "Joel is going to fall in the river and get washed away!"  We had a quick family meeting to assure me that they would all be keeping an eye on him, and all the kids, if they were close to the river.  I got used to it after a couple of days, and began to love to hear its sound.  The water would rush a bit faster in the evenings, we discovered.  Now that I'm home, that is the sound I pine for most of all.  

My brother and I took on the daunting task of shopping for groceries for the whole week that night after we all got situated in our cabins.  There is one grocery store:  Safeway.  It gouges people.  And it is CROWDED.  All the time, day and night.  That first shopping trip was a nightmare, both for us and for the hungry crew we had waiting for food back home.  And to top it off, everyone in there is thin, tan and in really good shape.  How depressing!  

But we made it back, had dinner and started settling in.  Jojo is so funny.  Or maybe it's just that he's four and we forget that sometimes.  He just didn't have a clue what "vacation" meant, no matter how many times we had explained it to him on the way up.  He couldn't believe we weren't going back home for seven more days.  

The kids had ice cream almost every night in the mugs from the cabin's really cool Fiestaware.  Cade got the idea that it looked like they had just awakened, since they were wearing their bathrobes and presumably sipping coffee.   We were all so tired by now that this just seemed like the funniest thing ever.  

We went to bed, happy we were all together in the mountains, with open windows and the sound of the river lulling us to sleep.  

Colorado - background and Day 1

A little over a year ago, my parents announced they had a surprise for us:  They wanted to take my family and my brother's family to Estes Park for a week's long vacation.  We were all overjoyed and began the tedious task of picking out a week the three of us that work thought they could take off that long.  It's hard to predict that far in advance!  But we finally agreed on the last week in June.  My dad booked it.  We've talked about it on and off throughout the year, and had a bit of a scare when the whole town was flooded last Fall (from the Fall River that runs through the entire town).  But my parents called a month or so after that and found out all was well; the owners had damage to their personal home but none to the cabins.  We had decided early on that we would stay in Raton, NM on the way up, and Amarillo on the way home to cut the trip a little.  So serious planning began about 2 months before the trip, culminating in a Family PowWow a month before we left to decide where we would try to stop for meals on the way up, and getting specific directions to our motels.

At this point we all were getting so excited it was ridiculous.  My boys had never been to the mountains, because we seem to end up at the beach every summer.  Jav had flew in and out of Steamboat Springs (at night) once to ski, but didn't do any sight seeing.  So I kept trying to explain what it was like, and I'd get so happy at the idea of finally going back to Colorado after 20+ years my head would almost explode.  But my previous trips to the Southern parts of the state could not prepare me for the beauty of Northern Colorado.

But I'm jumping ahead.

These cool three-wheelers greeted us in the Denny's parking lot for our first breakfast on the trip.  The parents' car and our car left from FW, and we were to meet up with my brother's car in Wichita Falls.  We discovered that first day that it is a bit of a challenge to keep up with each other on a long road trip.  My dad had bought walkie talkies that were supposed to work up to 30 miles away, but you couldn't here them if you had any music on, and sometimes they just didn't work.  When they did I took great joy in saying things like, "Breaker one-nine, this is silver cloud, do you read me?"  Maybe they were just pretending not to hear me.

We saw many, many of these windmills that first day.  They are so BIG up close.  

Our cute excited boys.  OK also bored by this point, but overall they did really well.  I tried doing surprise bags again like we did for Galveston last summer.  They kept Gabriel pretty occupied, but Joel would look inside, play with whatever it was for five minutes, and ask to open the next bag.  He was happiest in the car when we listened to the CD's he picked out.  But luckily he has excellent musical taste, so we all enjoyed his picks.

The two first bumps of mountains in New Mexico.  We've been getting excited about the mountains when seeing them my whole life.  As you can see, they were surrounded by thunderstorms on this day.  Which leads to the next crazy picture.  My brother and his family were ahead of us by about 30 minutes.  (We were ALWAYS last and I blame this on having two little kids who have to stop more).  He called and said they had just driven through snow.  I laughed and said, "It's 70 degrees outside."  

But when we finally arrived where they had been by we saw what they meant.  I looked like about 2-3 inches of snow was on the ground for about 2 football fields of road.  There had been accidents, there were police cars directing traffic through some still slippery parts of road. One little girl had gotten out of the car and was collecting the snow in a cup.  It was bizarre!!  We read later that that area of New Mexico was notorious for freakish hailstorms.  So logically, I guess that what had happened.  But it sure did look like snow.

We drove into Raton around 5:30 Mountain time.  

End of Day One