We took a little mini-vacation up to the Rocky Mountains and spent time at the YMCA of the Rockies, which is a very nice camp for families right on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park. At first I was a little hesitant about going to the YMCA, thinking that I'd have to share a gym shower with a bunch of sweaty guys, and instead of beds we'd all have army cots made from ripe cotton and faded to a pungent green. But it wasn't like that at all. The YMCA of the Rockies was a beautiful place, with lodges and cabins and horses and all sorts of great stuff for the kids. More on this in a minute.
The first day we drove from Amarillo to Colorado Springs where we spent the night at a friend's house. He has a Mini Cooper, so the next day Suzanne drove it around town, zipping in and out of driveways, up and down hills, finally ending at the Garden of the Gods (a fantastic and surreal city park that has great walking paths). I tried to drive the Mini, but my freakishly large feet couldn't push the gas pedal without hitting the break at the same time. I had to twist my foot to the side to squeeze it in there, but once lodged in I couldn't really get it out to hit the break. So I drove around frantically, downshifting whenever possible, lurching around corners and, in general, being a menace to all those in my way.
That afternoon we headed up through Denver, through Boulder, and up into the mountains, eventually ending up at Estes Park, a small tourist town nestled in the mountains. It was very crowded with, oddly, many people eating ice cream cones. We ended up at the Estes Park Brewery, a dreary warehouse-looking building, for a late lunch. Since it was really a lunch-dinner combo meal, the kids started calling it drunch.
Usually we have good luck with meals at micro-breweries. The sandwiches are often very good and most of the time the menu has some interestingly exotic and original dishes (The Phantom Canyon Brewing Co. in Colorado Springs has fantastic macaroni and cheese made with Gouda, spinach, and portabella mushrooms), but this time our luck ran out. I had the pork ribs, which were magnificently dry and tough, and all the other food seem blah. The one high point was that a TV in the dining area was tuned to Star Wars Episode Two. Don't get me wrong. This was a crummy movie, but at least it held the kids hypnotized while we waited for our food. It was too bad when the bartender changed the channel to a tennis game. When I told our waitress that we had been watching Star Wars, she merely said that someone else wanted to watch tennis, shrugged, and left. So here's a lesson for all you world travelers: R2D2 is not welcome at the Estes Park Brewery. They don't allow droids in there.
After drunch we drove a further five minutes to the YMCA grounds. As soon as we turned into the driveway, I knew I had no community showers to fear. It was a beautiful place, wrapped with mountains and topped with crystal clear blue sky. We saw kids playing soccer, cabins, lodges, horses, and all sorts of people everywhere. It wasn't crowded, not like downtown Estes Park, but it was a mess of activity.
We checked in at the main lodge and then made our way to the Wind River Lodge (we had slacked off too long and weren't able to get a cabin when we made our reservations). Because we weren't sure what we were getting into at the camp, we had packed some toilet paper, snacks, drinks, and extra towels, just in case. But no worries. Our lodge had it all, just like a hotel (although it had the anonymity of a hotel too; one time when we were coming back from a long hike, Alex ran ahead of us and ran into an open room that he thought was ours, but it was someone else's. We caught him a few minutes later, sitting there on the floor, tugging at his socks to get them off his feet. Megan was kind enough to shout, "WRONG ROOM, ALEX!" so that everyone at the YMCA, as well as everyone in Rhode Island, could hear her.
We knew ahead of time that our room wouldn't have a kitchen or fridge, so we brought along a fancy cooler that's been in storage for a couple of years. The cooler is fancy because you can plug it in and it'll keep its contents chilled (or heated, depending on which way you insert the plug). We used it quite a bit at our old house when our refrigerator died. When we got to the room, we tugged the cooler into place and plugged it in. The squeal that it immediately made would have sent a weaker man insane, but since I have been tempered by the inane squealing of kids invading each other's space, I was able to unplug the cooler without the loss of too much of my hearing. The noise it had made was terribly obnoxious, so I did what any mechanically minded person would do to fix it: I pounded the side of the cooler with my fist until, satisfied it would now submit, I plugged it back in again. The wail was awful, and I was afraid that it would attract a bus load of harpies if I let it continue. Suzanne thought it needed a good dose of WD-40, but after I dissected it with my little Swiss Army Knife, I realized that 1. it was a significantly larger problem that a can of spray would fix and 2. I didn't know how to put it back together again.
That's when I got the brainy idea of forgoing the cooling engine and using ice instead. Hey, I thought, it's a cooler. Coolers use ice, and even though the instructions said not to use ice, the engine was shot anyway, so why not? Well, I later found out the why not was because melting ice would enter the vents on the inside of the cooler and leak through the vents on the outside. This, nature-speaking, formed a "puddle" of water that spread throughout the carpet in our room like peanut butter on bread. It took all of our YMCA bath towels with the widths of Monopoly boards to soak it up. At least we didn't have a YMCA flooding emergency with the room below us.
The great thing about the YMCA of the Rockies is that there was always something to do for the kids. One morning I took Colleen to archery while Megan, Alex, and Suzanne went to do some nature painting. Colleen was a natural at archery while I, with my practiced background from college, was not. Colleen's first arrow sailed gracefully off the bow and nearly made it to the target. Mine snapped off quickly and made it nearly to my toe. Apparently I hadn't listened to the instructions very carefully, which now that I look back at it isn't a very good idea when dealing with a bow and a sharp arrow.
Even though the YMCA provided plenty of fun, we took a little time out to drive to the Rocky Mountain National Park for a day of hiking. A friend of mine told me that we should go to Bear Lake and hike around, but the Bear Lake Road was under construction and the only way to the lake was by bus, and when we saw the crowded school buses shuttling people back and forth we thought better of it. So we drove to the Sprague Lake Trailhead, which was the furthest we could drive before riding the bus, and hiked along Glacier Creek, an aptly named little river that I proved was cold by bravely dipping my fingers in it and then shrieking like a howler monkey, "Boy, that's chilly!"
Our hike that day covered roughly two miles, which in my flat feet terms is equivalent to 200 miles. The kids did great, especially on the rock strewn Boulder Brook path, and although once or twice I had that Blair Witch lost-in-the-woods feeling, the only danger we really faced was finding a hidden potty place for Alex.
Back at the ranch, we went on a interesting beaver hike and saw a couple of beaver lodges and dams (but, alas, no beavers). Our trail guide, who was earnest, sincere, and devoid of any humor, helpfully pointed out the different flowers and plants we passed and then, as an offhanded comment, showed us a few aspen trees clawed by black bears (they like sitting in the aspens) and some cougar tracks in the mud around the beaver dam. I started thinking that Alex would make a tasty morsel for one of those hungry cougars. He's small, compact, and easy portable. That's when I started carrying him on my shoulders.
After our hike, we met a small crowd at the livery (or lie-vary as someone in the crowd called it) for a rustic, old-fashioned hay ride. It was great. We sat on a large flat wagon filled with hay while two magnificent, although gassy, Clydesdales pulled us through the YMCA grounds. Alex had a blast especially after throwing hay on my head again and again and again. And again.
The hay ride took us to a special cookout area where our guides started a couple of fires and handed out marshmallows and sticks. Suzanne is a professional marshmallow roaster, having a practiced background in the art of the toast from her days in Girl Scouts. I quietly observed her technique, realizing that I could rip her off and create the world's perfect toasted marshmallow. So I waited, like a cougar in the woods, noting how she kept the marshmallow hovering just right over the flame and analyzing the timing of her rotations. Ah, the secret of the well-browned marshmallow! I finally had it.
I approached the fire with a sure and certain walk, bent down, and maneuvered my marshmallow tipped stick above the fire. Slowly I lowered into the heat, gently and careful, and then I rotated the stick to expose all sides of the marshmallow, dipping the stick into the flame briefly and then raising it. I was a marshmallow toasting maestro.
Finally, minutes later, my marshmallow was golden brown and perfect. I had outdone Suzanne at her own game, and I reveled in my (blatantly ripped off) technique. Ah, the crowd was mesmerized as I held up my stick and showed off my prize. Behold! The perfect marshmallow!
Suzanne took a look and said, "It looks a little goopy. You might not be able to get it off of there."
But that wasn't going to ruin my celebration. So I told her I would simply eat if off the stick.
Now here's the thing about leaving a stick of wood over the fire too long. It gets hot. Really hot. And brittle. Really brittle.
So when I bit down on the marshmallow, three inches of crusty, burning stick came with it, and I was stuck chewing a concoction of marshmallow and burnt wood that instantly fried the inside of my mouth and ripped away layers of skin that had taken years to build up. Perhaps it was the perfect toasted marshmallow, but it was the worst bit of disastrous food I've ever had, and that includes grasshopper salad. Since I couldn't talk because of the heat, all I could do was feel the drool of marshmallow mixed with black wood run down my chin.
It was a tasty comeuppance.
An evening of toothbrushing and a night later, our time in the magical, preternatural Rockies had come to an end, and we headed out for Boulder for lunch and then to Denver to stay the night. We made it to the Denver Zoo, mainly because I had read someplace that it was a fantastic zoo. I don't know where I read this, but whoever wrote that forgot to mention that all the animals disappear when it gets somewhat hot outside. And while we were there it wasn't just somewhat hot, it was extremely, unbearably hot. We saw a squirrel, but that was in the parking lot.
The next morning we went to the Denver Children's Museum, where the kids had some costume fun dressing up as little creatures and crawling around the massive indoor nature area. That was pretty fun, although I got the skunk eye from some moms (not many dads there) when they found me hiding in a tunnel in the underground labyrinth pretending to be a scary ground troll. Oh well.
Suzanne drove the entire way home and made it home by 8:30, which amazed me. Then again, if I had driven we'd probably be on the road even now. My theory on long-distance driving: if God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us pilots.
Click here for pictures of our trip. It bugs me a little that these pictures might end up in a Google cache, so please use the password Vacation if you want to see the pictures, and we'll be living large and cache-free. It's just like having a Visa card.
