In mid-February, Eric and I decided to take a road trip with our little family. We decided we'd take a long weekend and head over into Colorado - Craig, Steamboat Springs, Vail, Leadville - then head South to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and back to Salt Lake via the Moab route. As with all of our road trips, we spent a lot of time driving (surprising for a road trip right? ;)), sightseeing, stopping at anything that interested us, and trying out little Ma & Pa restaurants. On our road trips I always read a book out loud for Eric to listen to. This time it was "Chasing Lincoln's Killer", a good and very interesting book. The kids liked that every night we had a hotel booked with a pool so they got to go swimming each night - smart move and good bribing tool ;)!
We went through lots of little ski towns. I would love to come back one day with either just Eric or with our kids too when they are old enough to all participate in snow sports. It would be fun to rent a little place, go snowboarding, cross country skiing, and snowshoeing all day, and then head back to the house to get cozy by the fire...oh, and sip hot cocoa with whipped cream of course!
There was a huge hockey tournament going on in one of the towns. They had a large icy area with multiple hockey games taking place at the same time.
An old abandoned mining town.
Leadville was a neat city with all kinds of cool old buildings. And at 10,200 feet it is dubbed the "two-mile high city".
It sort of reminded me of Disneyland with all the neat colors of exteriors.
When we were driving through New Mexico we spotted Chaco Culture National Historical Park. We decided it was worth the semi-long dirt-road drive to the destination.
Ivan was not himself on this trip. He was teething for one thing. So he had a fever for most of the trip, a runny nose, and was grouchy as can be. His balance was also way off for some reason and he had a lump on his spine, which stressed me out the whole trip. I now think he must have just hit it at some point since it went away within a day or so of being home. Anyway.....he was pretty miserable the entire time driving, which was NO fun! It was nice to be out of the car for a bit to allow the kids to run around and enjoy the fresh air.
These were all SO amazing! We were astonished! And then....as we were walking out we spotted a plaque that said that lots of it had been rebuilt. The magic of it all faded :( Eric was crazily disappointed almost to the humorous stage - I was kind of surprised he didn't walk into the Visitor's Center and give them an earful about how misleading it all was.
Dead Horse Point. It sure does make me anxious, having little kids to worry about falling off the side!
Porter was a champ. I love traveling with newborns because they sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, and sleep again! SO predictable and SO easy!
We finally moved Ivan up front with Eric. He was still on the grouchy side but was quite a bit better. It was fun eavesdropping on their little conversations. I think these two will be good pals growing up.
