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