(This is a catch-up post. We had such a good time in Parker, and such a hectic schedule after, I am still trying to get us current.  As you may have noticed yesterday, we have a bit of time on our hands now. We left Denver heading east on Memorial Day. )

We have not actually spent the last six weeks in Moab. We did raft the mighty Colorado on a day-long expedition out of Moab.

From Moab, our little rig, with our Dodge Caravan as always in tow, chugged up Wolf Creek Pass in southern Colorado, after a day at Mesa Verde National Park.

 

 

We had visited the cliff dwellings before, and they seemed none-the-worse for wear in the last ten years.

The older I get, the harder it is to get my head around building something that lasts for centuries, with one’s bare hands. I wonder if the Puebloan who arose one June morning around the time Chris Columbus was cajoling Queen Isabella for cash thought over his breakfast of arrowroot and water about how to select rocks and mud that would support his dwelling roof through the bronze age, the industrial revolution, space exploration, and Miley Cyrus.

Probably not.

From Wolf Creek Pass, way up on the Great Divide, we found ourselves truckin’ on down the other side, and into Alamosa. On the way in, we passed the motel-in-the-drive in, a quirky establishment I stayed in in 1969 on a trip with my Aunt Kathy, and where Jen and I stayed again on a Colorado trip about ten years ago. In 1969 I saw the original True Grit there, with John Wayne and Kim Darby.

The next day we waxed up our boards and headed for Great Sand Dunes National Park, to show Coloradans how the coast dwellers play on running water. At the base of the Dunes is a river that runs about 200 feet wide and four inches deep—when it runs at all. In the lee of snow-capped Rockies peaks, my middle son demonstrated skimboarding. It’s probably been done there before, in this geological oddity–miles of sand beach in search of its ocean, now a thousand miles away. But it sure was fun to watch middle-son frolic.

We left Moab for the most intense part of the drive so far. In southern Arizona, just beyond the area of Mesa Verde in the southwest part of the state.  Though we hadn’t planned to go to Mesa Verde, we hadn’t planned on Arches either, and once we realized how close we were, well, how could we not revisit the ruins of our ancient kin?

From the Great Sand Dunes, we pointed north for a week of R&R with brother Mike in sunny Parker, Colorado, and some repairs on the Caravan. We all breathed a collective sigh of contentment. For the first time on the trip, we were headed for a destination we knew well–my brother’s comfortable, spacious home.

We backtracked the second day to the Cheyenne Zoo, on the east slope of Cheyenne Mountain overlooking the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs. We got there just in time to experience a hellacious hailstorm, and still carry the pockmarks on the Dodge to remember it by.

The next day we paid a visit to the very cool Denver Museum of Nature and Science and were again patting ourselves on the back for buying our Museum membership back in Dallas at the Perot Museum.

 

Mike has never been one to let the grass grow under his feet, and while we were in town, in one memorable day, we drove to Boulder to tour the Hammond’s Candy Factory in Denver, then to tour the Celestial Seasonings Tea headquarters on (of course! Sleepytime Drive in Boulder, and then to The Boulder Dinner Theater featuring Shrek! The Musical!

The Hammonds candy tour will be remembered best for the moment when 20 cell phones sounded simultaneously in the tour group to warn of an approaching tornado. We chatted up the employees while huddled in the ladies room, waiting for the all-clear signal. We also loaded up on candy, to show our appreciation for the free tour, and to support local merchants.

The Celestial Seasonings tour featured a variety of tea samples, including ones we hadn’t heard of, and we bought several boxes at below-retail. Then we were off to the dinner theater with Uncle Mike, and cousins Matt and Jenny, for a night of laughs, thrills, and very touching moments.

Next day, we boarded the Georgetown Loop Railroad for a short but  wonderful excursion from Georgetown, CO up Clear Creek in the Rockies Front Range to the town of Silver Plume.

 

Mid-trip, we climbed off for a mine tour of the old Lebanon Silver Mine that turned out to be a real treasure! The guide was a lifelong resident of Silver Plume, and she really knew her mining stuff! She was a delight, and answered every question with wit and a deep knowledge.  We also learned about the miners’ lunch–pasties–which we had a chance to sample later in our trip.

Trudging out from our day (one hour, fifteen minutes) in the mines, we were of course, ravenous. So next stop was for Mountain Pizza in Georgetown. Yes, pizza by the pound. Coming back into Parker, we stopped by Littleton in a driving rainstorm to snap a picture of the house on Josephine Way where I spent my fifteenth summer. My brother pointed out Columbine High School, three blocks from where I’d lived. Columbine has always had a connection for Jen and me. The tragedy started the week we married, in 1999, and sadly, continues every several weeks or so that schools are in session.

In America.

We wrapped up Colorado with a street festival in Denver on South Gaylord Street. For all your income tax needs, stop in at Mike Downs, CPA, 1040 Gaylord Street. 1040. Get it? The Festival was followed by a splendid cookout in Boulder at Matt and Jen’s, where we met their newest family member, and desserted on Chocolate Mousse cake from Carlo’s Bakery in Las Vegas. (Yes, the boys and I went back after all and bought a cake, froze it, and toted it to Colorado with us!)

Colorado is the one state west of the Mississippi where we feel at home already. We spent two weeks there nine years ago, and again two weeks three years ago, and if  it wasn’t so far from the ocean, we would strongly consider calling it home.