Category: Family

We said goodbye to the rest of the family and left the YMCA camp first thing Thursday morning and started our day off with a drive through Rocky Mountain National Park. (Note to self: if we ever head back this way during the summer, it might be worthwhile to think about staying at Grand Lake Lodge). The park was definitely one of those places where I wish we had more time and where I wish I was in better shape to hike because it was unbelievably beautiful and “sublime.�

We took the “lazyâ€? tour, the Trail Ridge Road, a white knuckle driving experience open only from Memorial day until the fall which crosses the mountains at over 12,000 feet. According to the Rocky Mountain National Park web site, it is the highest paved road in the United States. I guess that’s true; all I know for sure is that you are way the hell up there when you are on this thing– I mean WAY up there, way above the tree line, thick snow drifts on either side of the road kind of high up there. The road itself, which is kind of bumpy and a bit suspect in spots, is all switchbacks and sheer drops of God only knows how many feet with no shoulders and few guard rails. Annette spent much of the ride saying “height issues, height issues!â€?

But like I said, it was really beautiful. If we ever come back to Colorado, especially for a summer trip, I think one of the best places to go would be to Estes Park (which is on the eastern side of the park) or the previously mentioned Grand Lake, and one of the best things to do would be to hike around the national park. Of course, I’d need to be in much better shape and many pounds lighter (as the picture here would suggest)….

After the park (and its fine gift store where I bought a lovely snow globe), we drove along a pretty mountain stream and pretty much all downhill for about 40 miles and then started north to Rapid City, South Dakota. I have only three things to say about this six to eight hour part of our drive:

• For some reason, I found Cheyenne, Wyoming to be about the most confusing and misleading place to exit off of the interstate ever. I saw signs that suggested a variety of lunch options right off the road at a particular exit, but none of them seemed to be there. We ended up driving through Cheyenne, much of which struck me as a dreadful place.
• I suppose there was some beauty in the quintessential “Western Range Landâ€? scenery that is eastern Wyoming, its wide open spaces, rolling hills, grasses, and cattle. But after about 20 minutes of driving through this, I kept wondering who in the hell would voluntarily live in the middle of nowhere?
• This is Dick Cheney country. Sorta.

Anyway, we’ve ended up in Rapid City, our staging ground for our tour of the Black Hills Friday. It promises to be a fun albeit “touristyâ€? filled day– Mount Rushmore, Reptile Gardens, some mini-golf, some caves, etc.

I’ve already found Rapid City kind of frustrating and skanky. We got to our hotel after a longer than planned drive (and it’s a nice hotel with a pool and good Internet access, though there are some people above us who seem to think that a good way to have fun is to stomp around loudly and repeatedly shower), and I went shopping for some food and beverages in our room while Annette and Will went to the pool. My most obvious shopping option was as Wal-Mart “Super-Center.� Now, I think that Wal-Mart is a very very evil corporation, and I cannot honestly remember the last time I was in one of these places. Seriously, it may be about 5 years. But like I said, with no Target or Whole Foods in site, my options where limited.

My Wal-Mart shopping experience was dominated by two thoughts. First, “wow, is this place ever tacky and just unpleasant.� Second, “holy shit, the stuff in here sure is cheap!�

Unfortunately, South Dakota is one of these stupid states where you can get beer in a grocery store but to get wine, you have to go to a liquor store. After some dicey directions, I found my way to a liquor store that had fewer wine selections than the Farmer Jack in Ann Arbor (and that’s saying something, believe me!). It was in a neighborhood of check cashing stores, pawn shops, and “casinos,� which in South Dakota seem to be seedy little operations that look from the outside a lot more like porn book stores than the kind of more glitzy casinos I’m used to in Las Vegas or even Detroit. Kind of weird, though with a seven year old in tow, I don’t think we’ll get to find out the mystery behind these South Dakota casinos.

As before, the pictures are at my flick site, at least for the time being.

I’m typing this on Wednesday, the end of our third full day here at the YMCA of the Rockies, though I am sure I won’t be able to post this until Thursday or later. It’s been an incredibly busy day and lots of fun. It started with a trip to Bill’s Trout Pond in Winter Park, an operation run by an ex-ski bum named Bill. Bill was quite a hoot; he ran this trout pond in the summer and drove a shuttle van from the Denver airport and the Winter Park ski resort.

It was one of these places where you throw a line in the well-stocked pond and you’re going to catch a trout. The kids loved it; actually, all the kids loved it, which was a bit of a surprise. We figured that at least one of them would have gotten squeamish about the whole idea of catching fish and then watching Bill clean them, but they were all quite fascinated by the process, including the gutting. Bill, who had been running the fish farm for years and who had certainly seen groups like ours before, was not surprised to see the little kids this invested in the blood and guts side of things. Anyway, Will was the winning fisherman in that he caught two of the biggest fish (one trout that was 18 inches long), and he caught his fish first, almost right in a row. Then we had all of the fish for lunch– great and unbelievably fresh trout.

In the afternoon, Annette and Will and I went back into Winter Park to go to the ski resort and to take a try on the Alpine Sled ride. Really cool. Basically, you go down this track that is sort of like a bobsled run on a little cart where you control the speed. Will was behind Annette, and they were both way out in front of me; apparently, Will sped up on Annette, came up behind her yelling “ramming speed!� and bumped her cart, which is a no-no. It would have been fun to do that run again, actually, but we didn’t want to pay the $40 a person “all day� fee.

Anyway, after that, we went shopping and then we went out for dinner at a pretty nice German restaurant. Nice place and a good time for one and all, though I think it’s fair to say that the altitude and pine pollen had finally gotten to Annette. At one point in time, it got to everyone in my family other than the children, actually. You don’t think about this, but when you get up to 8500 feet or so above sea level and stay there for a couple of days, a lot of people start feeling pretty crappy. Just about everybody in our group (including me) had some symptoms from the altitude. So, when all is said and done, Colorado was “breathless� for more reason than one.

As before, there’s pictures on my Flickr account.

I’m typing this Sunday night as my son (along with many nieces and nephews) are running around playing various singing games and my siblings and parents are sitting around being entertained by them and I am taking a moment to hide away in our room.

We’re staying at a YMCA camp in Colorado, a huge (5000+ acres) affair near Winter Park that caters to family reunions and church groups and such. The house we’re staying in is built to house 25, certainly comfortable for the 17 or so of us. It includes two stoves, two refrigerators, two microwaves, and two bedrooms that have nothing but bunk beds. Guess where the kiddies are staying?

It took us about four hours to drive up here, up what I thought was a pretty challenging pass. The picture here is of Annette and I at the top, taken by Will (that’s why it is a little crooked). The camp is at about 8700 feet, which means that low-landers like me are spending the first day trying to adjust to the altitude. We hiked around the camp a bit, but mostly, we watched the dramatic thunderstorms that rolled in and out of the valley and tried to see if we could start a camp fire and listened to the kids play.

Interestingly enough, even here in the wilderness, getting away from it all, it’s pretty easy to get online. I am here via a free wireless connection in the coffee shop area of the administrative building. Down the hall, there’s a little store and a grill that has a “cyber cafe� section, $5 for the day or $20 for the week. Try to give up the ‘net (which I’m not trying to do, btw), and there’s someone ready to feed you a connection, even in the middle of nature.

Pictures are here; this is where they will be for a while as I add to it…

I have nothing of substance to report about our trip today. We got up, we drove and drove and drove, through western Iowa and Nebraska and the beginnings of Colorado to here, Sterling. Frankly, the main reason I’m writing now is because I can. The hotel we’re staying at here in Sterling has free wireless as part of the deal, and I’m pretty sure my internet access will be limited or non-existent for the next three or four days. Though I guess we’ll see.

Oh, okay, since I’m here, a few things I recall from the day’s trip:

• Lotsa rain in the morning.
• Every little town in Nebraska has some little museum advertised as a means of sucking people in off of the interstate.
• There were a couple of stretches of drive through Nebraska where the smell from the feed lots was pretty freakin’ awful. And long-lasting, too. I’m not talking about a drive by of a smelly farm that lasts a few seconds; I’m talking about the smell of shit and death together for a good 15 minutes. BTW, how’s the burger?
• We left Cedar Falls this morning about the same time as my parents, more or less. We had decided that there was no point in following each other and that we’d just meet up on Sunday. So who shows up at our hotel? The Ps, of course. They did their thing for dinner while we did ours, but it’s like we planned it. Pretty funny.
  
  

The first leg of our trip westward is here to my home town of Cedar Falls, Iowa. A few thoughts in some particular order:

• We got here yesterday evening; this morning, my father and I played golf. I managed to get a birdie on a hole after hitting a 3-wood shot well over 200 yards up a hill and on to the green and then sinking a long long putt. This ultra-lucky shot rolled on to the green while the group ahead of us was still putting. I apologized profusely from the fairway, and my father ran into them in the clubhouse afterwards and told them I got a birdie on the hole. They seemed pleased.
• It’s too freakin’ hot and humid– like mid-90s.
• I continue to be impressed with the improved quality of life in Cedar Falls. For example: not only does CF finally have a Starbucks; it also has a drive-thru.
• The highlight of the day and the source of the photo here is from the children’s costume parade at Sturgis Falls Days, which is the annual big summer celebration here in Cedar Falls. Will participated in his knight costume (as pictured above). Sturgis Falls is a nice small town fest, and if we had more time and weren’t leaving first thing tomorrow morning, I might be there still at the beer tent and listening to dixieland jazz. But we are and so I’m not. Besides, it was really REALLY hot, and then it started to rain, so time to come home.

Here is another picture from the parade:

Here’s Will (pictured in the middle) leading the parade. Well, behind the guy who was really leading the parade, a bagpipe player. A nice touch for the children’s parade, we thought.

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Colorado, and I am thinking I won’t have Internet access for a couple of days. Probably a good thing. But stay tuned for details when access is available….

Actually, neither father’s day nor mother’s day are really that big of a deal around here. Annette was kind enough though to take my hint about our need for new cell phones, and she was persuaded by the numerous Verizon Wireless ads for two camera phones for the price of one. Or something like that. With the hassle of dealing with the rebate paperwork, it really is a pretty good gift to me.

Here’s one of the first pictures I took with this thing; I took it yesterday and I managed to figure out how to send it to my email account this morning. A bit of resizing with PhotoShop, and ta-da, picture of Will sticking his tongue out at me. Not too bad of quality, if you ask me.

Not much else on the agenda in terms of fatherly activities. We’re getting ready for a major roadtrip out west, so we have a ton of stuff to do around the house before we go. I have some large work projects, too. No steak dinner for me (I don’t want one anyway); just veggie burgers….

I meant to do this earlier, but Will and I have been busy today preparing for Annette’s return. Here’s a few highlights from day three and four of Annette on the road:

• Will and I went to the video game store in the mall, and he bought the video game based on the movie Robots and I bought GranTurisimo 4, which is a driving game that is pretty freakin’ hard.
• We went to the Estabrook end of the year carnival, which was a joy and a delight. Well, sorta. Actually, no. Dramatic weather rolled in and most of the activities were forced indoors. I found the thing kind of miserable, but Will seemed to like it. Here’s a link to a bunch of pictures.
• Will and I ran various errands, which included a gelato stop, we had dinner, and then went to get Annette, who arrived safe and sound. She gave me a couple of snow globes, Will a t-shirt with a lot of bugs on it, and some sugary maple candy. She knows her boys…