2012 Vacation Day Nine: Not ready to go home yet

We woke up on Friday and had our final meal with Emily and David.  We loved spending our vacation with them and we were sad that our time with them was almost over.  

If our children were older we easily could have spent another day sightseeing in Colorado Springs.  There were many things I'd looked into doing that seemed really interesting.  However, for one reason or another they didn't seem very toddler friendly. Here is a list of some of the things I would have liked to see:  Molly Kathleen Gold Mine, Seven Falls, and Royal Gorge Bridge.  But those things would have to wait a few years.  Instead it was time to start heading home.      

We packed everything up and took down the tent again.

David helped with the tent one last time.  He was such a big help.  Because of him I hadn't had to do anything with setting up or taking down the tent.

We all said goodbye.  I'm glad that Emily and David will be visiting Utah in September.  It's nice to know that I only have to wait 2 months to see her again.

Asher and Bridger were so cute.  I love how happy Bridger looks in this picture.

As we drove away from Colorado Springs I glanced at the clock in the car.  I couldn't believe it was only 8:46.  Brandon and I have never been on the road this early.

The original plan had been to drive all the way back to Bountiful in one day.  We figured the kids would eventually fall asleep and it would be easier to drive late into the night rather than stop somewhere along the way.  Plus we'd never been able to come up with a very good place to stop along the way.

But on Friday night Brandon proposed a new idea. "What do you think about going back to the Crystal Geyser in Green River and camping there on Saturday night?"  He asked.  I was a little unsure about the idea.  I wasn't sure if we could camp there and I worried that we'd get the tent all set up with the kids in bed and then have some sheriff show up and kick us out.  Brandon found the brochure for the Crystal Geyser.  It had a little tent icon on it and so we figured camping was allowed.  So making it to Green River became our new goal for the day.  

Since our drive had just become 4 hours shorter we decided to spend some time in downtown Denver.  We drove there from Colorado Springs and parked by the capitol.

Then we walked around the city.  Early in the planning process for this trip, we had decided to not do anything that we could do in Utah. That's why we didn't take the kids to the Denver Zoo, Aquarium, etc.  We weren't even planning on going near downtown Denver at all.  So I had absolutely no reference material as we went exploring.

We had no idea what to "the sights" were so we just walked around and enjoyed looking at the buildings.

The kids were just happy to be out of the car.  Everybody we passed made comments about the fact that we had three young kids.

The girls loved this fountain.  I started out circling it far away and then I got closer and closer to it.  They screamed with delight every time the water touched them.

We found some sort of park area and I nursed Derrick while the girls ran around with Brandon.

Then we went back to the jeep.  There was actually another white jeep parked a few spaces ahead of ours.  When the girls saw it they thought it was ours.  They let out little happy screams as if they were saying, "yay, our car.  Our wonderful car."  We started to pass the jeep and they started crying.  We tried to explain that it wasn't our car, but they kept crying until they saw our real car.  Every body got diaper changes and then we were on the road again.   

We drove up I-70 and enjoyed looking at all the mountains.

We were making good time and soon we were at the entrance to the tunnels.

My family drove this same road in 2003 and these long tunnels are one of the few things I remember about that long drive.

Then we descended down a canyon and came to the cute little town of Frisco.

I was fighting off sleep the whole way down the canyon so we stopped at the marina park in Frisco so I could sleep.  Derrick and Charlotte were asleep too, but Lydia was awake.  Brandon took her to the play ground.  Some of the equipment was too advanced for her.  Here she is looking confused.

So Brandon took her on a walk.

Brandon had passed through this town with his family about a year before we met.  He thought it was very pretty.  He'd thought about coming here for our honeymoon, but that didn't happen.  He'd always wanted to come back and bring me.

Of course I was in the car sleeping so instead he got to enjoy the area with his cute little daughter.

Charlotte woke up too so soon he was enjoying the area with both his daughters.

They had a lot of fun with the swings.  You may have noticed that a lot of the things the girls enjoyed were things we could easily have done at home.  They liked rocks, water, bugs, parks, other kids toys, etc.  So was it worth it to drag them across two states just to do a lot of everyday things with them?  Yes it was!  It was great to get away from all the distractions in our lives.  We didn't get online once during the 10 days were were gone.  Our phones were dead half the time.  We were a little island of a family having a great time together.    

While Brandon played with the girls Derrick and I continued to sleep in the car.  I'm so glad that Brandon let me sleep.  He understood that if I couldn't stay awake then there was no way I could keep him awake while he was driving.

Plus he enjoyed the little moments with the girls.  Here is Lydia doing one of her trademark poses.

The girls eventually discovered the slide and spent a lot of time playing on it.

I woke up and made sandwiches out of the last of the bread.  We ate those along with string cheese, capri sun, and nutty bars.  Those are some of our favorite vacation snacks.

Derrick woke up and so I nursed him while Brandon took the girls out on the marina for Lake Dillion.  He's always wanted to do that.

One day we will have to come back here and go boating.

They all made it back to the car just as it started raining.  The situation reminded me of the first day of our vacation last year.

We started driving in the rain which was a little scary for me because the passenger side windshield wiper was all warped and didn't work well.

Brandon's side worked okay which was good because we drove through rain for the next several hours.

All the kids were really good and didn't seem to mind all the driving.  At one point I looked back and saw this going on in the back seat.

I'm so glad the kids could entertain each other.  I kept myself entertained by taking pictures of the scenery.  And soon I had lots of material to photograph.  We were in Glenwood Canyon.  I had no idea this was coming and I was totally unprepared for how pretty it was.

This canyon wasn't part of the interstate highway system until the 60's.  When the road was put in, the engineers tried to make it have as small an impact on the canyon as possible.

In a lot of places the two sides of the highway are almost on top of each other.  That idea keeps the canyon really pretty.

We stopped at one of the rest stops so I could feed Derrick.  Again Charlotte was asleep while Lydia was awake.  So Brandon and Lydia went exploring together.

This was really good for both of them.  Lydia is a really big mama's girl and she usual wants to be with when we go places.  I'm glad she had some alone time with her Daddy.

The canyon was breathtaking.  Next time we go through this way I want to schedule some time to get out and hike around.

Charlotte never woke up so we just put Derrick and Lydia back in their seats and kept on going.  We passed through the town of Glenwood which is famous for its hot springs.  The hot springs and the Glenwood Caverns are more things that will have to wait to see until my kids are a little older.

We continued on through more rain.  The windshield wiper on my side still wasn't working correctly.

Soon we were close to Grand Junction.  

The girls were starting to go nuts from being in the car so we stopped at the first Wendy's we saw.  

The girls were so cute in the restaurant.  They don't really like meat so they barely touched the little hamburger we bought for them to share.  They do like fries though.  And root beer.  They ate a lot of both.  I spilled a little bit of root beer on the table.  Charlotte said, "eew." and make a wiping motion for a napkin.  I gave her a napkin and she wiped up the spill.  Lydia wanted to have her own napkin so we gave her one and she helped clean up too.  

The Wendy's happened to be right across the street from an Auto Zone.  We put the kids in the stroller and front pack and walked over there to buy new windshield wipers.  As we walked up to the store we noticed that the garbage can in front of the door was over flowing with windshield wiper packaging.  Apparently many other people had been caught in the rain with bad windshield wipers.

 I think the Auto zone guy was a little worried when he saw a family walk up to his store.  I reassured him by explaining that we were just trying to give our kids a break from the car.  We also walked over to a nearby grocery store and bought milk, cereal, and bowls for the next day's breakfast.  Back at the car Brandon replaced the windshield wipers.    

While I nursed Derrick.

Then we kept on driving.

By this point we were all getting sick of the car.  We turned on the radio to keep us entertained.  The most entertaining thing we could find was a station that played an 11 minute version of a cover to "Heard it through the grapevine."  Good thing I'd had that nap.

If you'd asked me before this trip where I thought Green River was in relation to the Utah boarder I would have told you it was about 5 miles away.  Instead it is actually 75 miles away.  And it's a long 75 miles.  There is nothing around.  We were lucky to be driving that way during sunset.  So at least the sky was interesting.

I loved watching the clouds change color over time.

I would have been content to just sit back and watch the clouds, but I was nervous because we were in a race against time.  I kept wondering if we would make it to the Crystal Geyser before the sky became completely dark.

We didn't make it.  The last light was fading as we pulled off the highway in Green River.  We navigated the road to Crystal Geyser with only our headlights for light.  I was wondering if we would even be able to tell where the geyser was when suddenly we rounded a corner and saw this eerie sight on the other side of the river.  The whole area was lit up from the lights and we could hear a generator running. To make it even creepier, none of this had been there the week before.   

 I didn't have time to dwell on how freaky the whole scene was because Brandon and I needed to get the tent up and fast.  All three kids had been screaming for at least a half hour.  We'd ignored them by rolling down the windows and letting the rushing air drown out their crying.  But now I could hear them perfectly and I knew they wanted out of the car.

Brandon and I found a level spot and put up the tent by the light of the jeep headlights.  Then we brought the kids inside.  Lydia was scared and crying.  Charlotte was happy to be out of the car and ran around the tent while I put up the pack'n'plays.  Then a big gust of wind blew on the tent and pushed in one of the tent polls - right over Charlotte.  That was the end of her having any fun that night.

Brandon struggled to secure the tent while I struggled to calm down 3 hysterical babies.  With the help of prayer, rope, and a butter knife, Brandon got the tent sturdy enough to withstand the wind.  And with the help of a lantern, binkies, bottles, and singing every primary song I knew, I got the girls to sleep.  You can see that Charlotte wanted to be as close to the light as possible.  

Derrick was happy to have the whole middle of the tent to himself, and he soon fell asleep too.

Brandon and I finished getting the tent ready for the night and then we went outside to see the geyser and the creepy factory looking area.

We sat by a rock near the geyser pool and looked at the creepy area with Brandon's binoculars.  We felt like spies.  I was pretty convinced we were witnessing some sort of alien takeover.  The fact that the whole thing reminded me of the alien mine in the movie, "Cowboys and Aliens" didn't help.  Brandon thought that maybe it was a movie set for The Lone Ranger which was filming in Utah.     

While we sat and spied on the people walking around the creepy thing the geyser started making sputtering noises.  We shinned the flashlight on it and saw some water splashing around the base, but no eruption.  We decided that we had a pretty good chance of seeing it go off the next day, and went to bed.