Joe's Blog: Vacation 2015 (Part 1)

Friday, July 17, 2015

Vacation 2015 (Part 1)

We just returned from 3.5 weeks of vacation covering 7 states and 3,000+ miles. It's going to take me a couple post to cover all of vacation but here is the first one covering our first week and a half.

We started out on June 17th. Leaving Anthem at 9:00 AM it was already over 90 degrees and it eventually got over 110 that day and 115 the next. We got out just in time. Our first day we drove all the way up to Durango, CO. It was a six hour drive to our first stop, Four Corners. Three hours into the drive Zach threw up in his car seat. It wasn't a lot but it was enough to make the car stink and give us a good start to vacation. We stopped at Four Corners to get a picture of the kids in all four states at the same time. Of course there is controversy over the location of the monument we paid the 10 bucks and took the pictures anyways. So when I say we were in all four states at the same time that is highly debatable. Depending on the source the actual borders are anywhere from 2 miles off or going off Google they should actually meet in the parking lot of the monument.

After an hour or so at Four Corners we headed up an hour to Durango to spend the night. We happened to be staying at a hotel that was right across the lot from a brewery with mediocre food but they had some decent beer. Actually the blueberry wheat beer was really good. Durango was full of the strangest people. I swear half the town is on drugs. We got in the brewery and asked if they have a high chair for kids. The waiter looked at a stool and said "This is high". I suspect the stool wasn't the only thing that was high. I asked the waiter where I could get some water and he told me where to find a grocery store. I said "So that's about a 5 minute walk"? His response was "Four and a half". I had to wonder if he was pushing for 4:20. When I got to the grocery store they had no drugs signs with a picture of a pipe and a needle. No joke. In Arizona it's no firearms signs, in Colorado it's no drugs.

After dinner we had a hard time getting the kids to bed. This was just the start of the fun going on a long vacation with small kids. I think we finally got them to sleep around 11 that night and we had to be up early to get to the train by 7. The next morning we woke up at 5:40, ate breakfast, packed up the car, and made it to the train well before 7. Packing up the car was the funnest part of vacation. I say that with all sarcasm. All that stuff in a small Camry, it was like playing Tetris every time we had to pack up the car. Needless to say after we sell our house in Florida, and buy a new one out here, we will be buying a SUV and an RV so these trips aren't as crazy.

I don't remember how I found out about the train. I don't know if I was just browsing the internet or if it was a friend's facebook post but I decided to book our tickets a few months back. I noticed when we checked in at the train that a friend in CO liked the train so I might have got the idea from his post. The train ride was 3.5 hours up to Silverton and about 3 hours to get back to Durango. I did all the driving the whole trip so the train ride was a good break (kind of) to sit back and look at the scenery around me. Of course since the kids didn't sleep the night before I had them laying all over me on the train. Not the most comfortable hour and a half having a sweaty kid laying all over me. Allegedly, according to my Dad's neighbor who's mom grew up in Silverton, one of the trains is the sister train to the one at Knott's Berry Farm. I guess Knott's bought it years ago.

Once we got up to Silverton we had about two hours to eat, take some pictures, walk around, then head back down. Instead of spending another night in Durango we just ate dinner downtown then took off to Cañon city. Driving to Cañon City was about a five hour drive that night. A couple hours in the driving got a little hard. The sun had set, visibility wasn't all that good, and deer were all over the road in the San Juan mountains so I had to drive slow. I think we finally got to our hotel around midnight.

We decided to sleep in until 7 the next morning. We had another long day ahead of us. We first went to Royal Gorge about 30 minutes away and spend about two hours there. Had I known how much there is to do there we really could have spent the whole day there. I thought all you do is walk the bridge but they have a zip line that crosses the canyon, a tram, a train at the bottom of the canyon, and a tram that goes up the canyon wall from the bottom. We had other plans that day though so we just walked the bridge and took off to Manitou Springs.

In Manitou we went to Cave Of The Winds first. I remember going there as a kid and it's the cave from Southpark where Al Gore was looking for ManBearPig. We didn't find ManBearPig but we did find a stuffed bear. The cave was fun but we were ready to get outta there after the tour. Zach is quite a handful when he doesn't get his way and can't run around where ever he pleases and touch everything in sight.

After Cave Of The Winds we made what was supposed to be a short drive over to Garden Of The Gods. This is another place I went to about 18 years ago. I was looking for a large staircase there, which is rated one of the best in the world, that we went up last time we were there. However I seem to have mixed up two trips in Manitou. The staircase is at Seven Falls and was closed at the time due to all the rain. So we just walked around Garden Of The Gods for a couple hours. I forgot how amazing this place was. Really one of the best stops we made on our entire trip. After two hours there we headed up to Fort Collins to spend the rest of the week with family.

We had a fun week in Fort Collins. We spent the weekend just hanging out at my Aunt's house. I had to work Sunday anyways; this is how I was able to spread out my vacation for almost a month. The following week we spent a couple days at a lake not far away, I went shooting with my cousin Cory and my Uncle Dave, we did some BBQ, mixed some drinks, and just kinda took it easy for the week. We took one day and went to Estes Park with Ashely and Cory. The drive was almost as good as the city. Driving through the mountains we saw a herd of mountain goats.

I definitely enjoyed the weather in CO. My cousins were complaining that it was hot. But a high of 90 is a lot better than a high of 115. It was a fun week just hanging out. Definitely a long over due trip to visit my redneck family. We're going to try to start making it out there more and might even consider moving to Englewood since my company has a new data center there.

The following Friday, June 26th it was time to head up to Montana for another cousin's wedding. It was a long drive but an easy one. Seven hours to go more than 500 miles but we were flying averaging about 90 through the entire state of Wyoming. I'll write about our time in Montana on my next post.

Day 1 at Four Corners.

Allegedly we are in four states but I think my car was really what was in all four states back in the parking lot.

In Durango at the Durango Brewing Company. Adri loved playing this game. Zach would get a laugh whenever the pucks went sliding so I tried to get a picture of his while sliding a puck. I was midway down the table and had my hand on the puck while Adri threw one from behind me and busted my finger open.

June 18th. After a night of hell trying to get these kids to bed look what we wake up to.

June 18th ready for our train ride. It's a narrow gauge train so it swayed quite a bit. It was a little nerve racking the first half hour getting used to it.

The river is normally green but they had a lot of rain this year so it was higher than normal and really brown. I was surprised how close the train was to the river. I asked a ranger if the train had ever derailed and he said once. I thought he was joking because he said it was a couple weeks ago but he was serious. It took them two hours to get it back on the track. He said that is the only time he knows of it ever derailing.

At one of our stops.

Second stop going up for a fill-up.

At Silverton

Treasure Falls in the San Juan National Forest. This is about 90 minutes or so out of Durango. It was cold there, about 65 degrees at sunset and the temperature dropped to around 50 when we hit the summit 20 minutes later. About ten minutes after the falls we saw probably 20-30 deer within 20 minutes. They were all over the windy road. There was snow at the summit. A beautiful drive but a hard and slow drive. I'd like to go camping close to there in the next couple years.

June 19th at Royal Gorge.

This sign was just so stupid I had to take a picture of it. Who is going to fish off a bridge hundreds of feet above the water?

At Cave Of The Winds. We were only able to do the normal tour because of the kids but the have other tours. The adventure tour was closed due to,,,,, the rain.

Cave Bacon!

The stalactite behind me is close to 9 feet long.

At Garden Of The Gods. I have a picture from 18-19 years ago giving my twin sister a piggy back right around this same place.

Pike's Peak in the background.

Earlier that morning at Royal Gorge we met a nice older Asian couple and they took all the family pictures of us. Well as we were parking I saw them again at Garden Of The Gods. We found them at this spot and they took another picture for us.

Zach's new thing is to yell out "Zachy Zach" when he gets excited. He does it in this video about 45 seconds in.

Our second trip to the lake. Took Zach on a boat ride. I think he had fun but you can't tell by his face. That is Zach's look of curiosity.

Danny set me up to look stupid in this picture. I caught the first Walleye of the day and the biggest. We ended up filleting it a couple days later but I didn't get to eat it.

Coming back from fishing Cory was a ways from shore so we towed him in like true rednecks.

So peaceful when they are sleeping. Zach kept trying to lay on Adri.

I went shooting with Cory in the Roosevelt National Forest, about an hour east of Fort Collins. We thought we were in trouble for a minute when the sheriff showed up but he was nice and just wanted to make sure we knew the rules. I got to shoot a few guns I had never tried before like a .223 and a 22-250. The 22-250 was my favorite gun. I was hitting clay pigeons we had placed in a tree 140 yards out with no problem. I pulled a perfectly preserved .38 special I shot out of a tree and was able to put it in a back in the casing. Now if only I can remember where I put it I can make a necklace or a key chain with it.