Rocky Mountain Highs, Cheap and Otherwise

The experienced trekker believes in bad omens: mine were car-related. The Xterra needed a new catalytic convertor; oh, and the exhaust manifold has a leak, which means that the cabin might flood with carbon monoxide, which would cause us all to pass out, which might lead to the SUV soaring majestically off of a mountain road and into the thin Colorado air, which would be bad. The Audi might need a new water pump: the service manager said that his guy found some "dry residue" on the engine cover which might be indicative of a coolant leak, which might lead to the trusty A4 sputtering and dying in the Utah badlands, which might lead to my and the fam experiencing something like this. Somehow I knew that my decision to drive the family to the Rockies would come with a price. 

Screw it. It was too late to get plane tickets and a rental would have cost a fortune. We packed up the Audi - I was a bit nervous about taking the small car, but that trunk is amazing; it held so much shit that I'm convinced that the previous owner was a Time Lord -  and off we went. "Dry residue" my ass - We were meeting my sister and her family in Dillon, Colorado, there to stay at a condo that they'd procured from a friend. The costs were minimal, freeing us up to explore the mountains and do mountain-y things. I was excited; I was a Mountain guy before I became a Beach Guy, thanks to my years in Alaska. And this would be our first real roadtrip as a family of four. Having done many cross-country road trips as a kid, I was prepared for the long haul across Nevada, Utah, and half of Colorado: Lucas and Zoe were strapped in like Apollo astronauts, surrounded by books, toys, snacks, and the ace-in-the-hole - the portable DVD player (don't give me that look; you take a 5 year-old and a 20 month-old across 2600 miles of freeway without a stash of Pixar flicks and see how long you go before leaving them on the roadside - I'm guessing you'd get as far as Barstow). 

What struck me, as we pulled into the driveway yesterday evening, after being away from home for seven days, was how many of the moments that we'll keep with us were wholly unexpected. Yes, we did some tourist-y stuff (a day of boating on Lake Dillion, a few runs down the Alpine Slide at Breckenridge, a trip on the old mine train at Georgetown), and we managed to splurge - I leveraged my dad/travel blogging status and got us a night at the stunning Ritz-Carlton resort at Bachelor Gulch. There is something to be said about dining at Spago at 11,000 feet, the hostess complimented us on how well-behaved our kids were (must have been the lack of oxygen, dulling them into a compliant stupor), and other than Lucas running around the room yelling "REDRUM! REDRUM!" it was a wonderful way to cap the week. I'll spare you the details on all of that; I've got tons of material for my other writing job at UpTake and you can get a complete breakdown on our Colorado trip when I've hammered it all out. (Long story short: Colorado in the summertime is an absolute delight, and we will be going back.)

No, the best part was the adventure of all: putting the A4 through its paces on the twisty I-70 (ah, the joys of turbo-charged AWD, cornering at 90 mph)...

 ...watching Zoe giggle with delight as she played in the rain during an afternoon thundershower...

...finding beauty and life in the most unexpected places...

  ...this was what I brought back. More than getting some much-needed R and R, I wanted the kids to have an experience, to see and smell and touch new parts of the world, such that they'd have wanderlust ingrained into them, imprinted on their young minds so as to become part of who they'll be. The high point of the trip for me - figuratively and literally - was an impromptu detour. After our trip to Georgetown, I took us up, up, up the Loveland Pass to the Continental Divide viewpoint, nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Dizzying, and not merely due to the thin air. "Dad!", Lucas yelled at one point, looking down at wisps of clouds below, the tall trees hundreds of feet down looking like so much moss. "We're higher than the sky!" Zoe offered up a simple and telling "WOW!" - the barbaric and triumphant yawp! of first-time explorers, eagerly anticipating their next discoveries. 

(Photo credits go to Beth. I'm good with words, not so much with pictures.)