So, our big trip to Colorado.  It was two weeks on the road, driving up through New Mexico to the top of Colorado (Ft. Collins to be exact) to attend the wedding reception of one of Claire’s cousins.  Oliver turned out to be a decent traveller.  Even though he did get sick of being in the car on some days, he was excited by all the different places we visited and really enjoyed camping.

We started out on a Saturday (four weeks ago) and stayed a night in Dallas with my parents.  From there, we drove up though the Texas Panhandle on our way to Clayton, NM. 

Unfortunately, we ran out of gas!

Yes, I realize it’s an odd concept for a hybrid to run out of gas, but the Low Fuel light tricked us.  I think the car wasn’t used to all that hot, hard driving.  It was late in the day, so at least it was cooling off outside.  We hung out for two hours, eating cherries and waiting for our emergency gas to arrive.  In the end, we were only twenty minutes from Clayton.

The next day, we drove up to the home of Andy Walker’s parents.  We lucked out that Andy and Miki happened to be visiting that month, so we arranged the visit.  What a beautiful mountain retreat:

We got to spend a couple of days taking it easy on the ranch and hanging out with young Will.

It was great to see the Walker family and bask in their bucolic glow.  After leaving them on Wednesday, we travelled further north to Rocky Mountain National Park to camp for a couple of days.  It quickly became apparent that the little two-person backpacker’s tent we own was a little less than spacious, but everyone worked it out.

First, we had to set up that tent, and do it during an afternoon rainstorm.

I had no rain gear, so I pitched the tent as quick as I could and jumped back in the car to make sandwiches for dinner.  Oliver’s gear was a flannel bear cub jumpsuit, and he had no qualms about splashing in the puddles and spreading mud on the outside of our car.  He was overjoyed.  Claire, who had a poncho, watched over him.  When I handed him his sandwich through the window, I felt like I was in a wildlife park feeding the wild animals.

Note that he’s biting down on a muddy stick at the same time.

The rain soon stopped and we kept dry for the rest of out stay.  The next day, we took a short hike to Nymph Lake.  This being the high season, it took us over an hour of waiting and bussing to reach the trailhead.  But it was worth it for the scenery.

We has some campfire dinner and that was it for the night.

On our way to Ft. Collins, we drove the highest stretch of highway in the country.  It was so high that we drove up to a snow field.  This was Oliver’s first encounter with the stuff, and though he was skeptical at first, he warmed up to it (so to speak).

The wedding reception was held in what is traditionally Claire’s family’s restaurant, with a tropical theme (the couple had actually held the wedding in Mexico the week before).  Oliver stayed up dancing way past his bedtime.  Here’s the bride, with Oliver putting on his best wedding-photo smile.

After that, we hung around Ft. Collins for a few days to visit with Claire’s many relatives.  We rode bikes, went swimming and ate a lot of Mexican food at the family restaurant.

To start the second half of our trip, we journeyed down to Denver, where we stayed at a fancy hotel we booked on Priceline.  Unfortunately, there was a huge John Deere convention in town, so we were shuffled off to the secondary building, some kind of converted office tower or something.

Another bit of lucky timing played out when we got to visit with our friend Wendy as she was in the middle of a two week stay in Colorado Springs, doing research for her PhD program.  Here’s Oliver eating ice off the table in front of her.  Such manners!

We got to visit the delightful Cheyenne Mtn. Zoo, with its ten-story incline . . .

. . . and lurk inside the Focus on the Family compound, hoping that we wouldn’t be immediately tagged as non-believers.  Still, true to their name, they had an excellent children’s area.

As we found out later, one of Andy’s friends built that spinning globe you see in the background.

After camping with Wendy at a cheesy RV park, we took a morning stroll around the Garden of the Gods rock formations.  They were very impressive red rocks jutting out from nowhere.

Our third bit of good luck timing met up with us on our final Thursday as we drove into New Mexico.  Our friends Emily and Kyle, with their toddler daughter Sophia, were winding up two months on the road, and we all managed to converge in Ojo Caliente, NM, the home of a hot springs resort.  We stayed at the campground on site, and boy howdy, it had the worst mosquitoes I’d ever seen.  We tried to hang out at the resort as much as we could, taking turns visiting the hot springs and taking care of the kids.

On Friday, we caravanned with an ambitious goal of crossing most of NM and arriving in Ft. Stockton, TX.  We couldn’t help but stop in Roswell, though.  Unfortunately, we arrived just twenty minutes after the UFO museum closed.  Witness the heartbreak:

I did spot a suspicious “squirrel” in an antique store window, however.  Is that some sort of transceiver it’s holding?

On our last day, the six of us drove through the beautiful West Texas plains and marveled at all the wind farms.  We stopped for lunch in Kerrville and picnicked by the Guadalupe, jumping in for a short swim. 

We were home and collapsing into bed by sundown.