Colorado 2013 - The Road Trip

Driving 700 miles in a small truck with 3 young children can seem intimidating, but Clint and I totally embraced the road trip.  This may have been the boys favorite part of the trip.  My diaper bag (a.k.a. the tool box) was loaded with snacks.  We had all our meals and cool beverages in the ice chest.  DVD players, ipods, books on tape, subscription to Spotify. Check.  More stuff than our truck should carry.  Check.  The baby.  Check. (I am always paranoid I am going to leave this little guy.)

We left Stillwater on a Friday morning with a few last minutes stops and Starbucks.  We were riding high 60 miles out when the pack n' play wiggled loose and flew down the highway.  That's a critical piece of luggage so we circled around and picked it up.  We made it to Enid to reassemble our truck when a truck driver walked up and started to talk to us about our luggage flying off.  He was nice and only in small town Oklahoma will you get that kind of small talk.  Clint also learned a new trick at the truck stop, inhale on a cigarette and shoot a 5 hr energy all in one shot.  Um we'll stick with coffee.

We made it to GuymonD for lunch.  We enjoyed a picnic, football, and a playground in the barren park.  The rest of the day was uneventful.  We made it to Raton and stayed at our favorite hotel, Best Western Raton.  We ate dinner in the room from the ice chest, had our hotel dance party, went swimming, then watched cartoons.

The next morning Uncle A met us at the hotel for day two.  We ate lunch at the park in Salida and Clint and Uncle A went on a treasure hunt for Twilight beer and a birthday pie for me.  We eventually left Salida and made it to the cabin.  Yes it takes us two whole days to get there with all our stops.

Now as smooth as the way out there was, the way home was memorable.  We left the cabin later than anticipated and ate dinner in the national forest in Westcliffe.  Shortly after that we saw a bear on the side of the road.  We turned around and got a closer look.  It was pretty neat.  Not much further down the road, Sawyer vomited all over everything.  We pulled over and ended up in the driveway of a conspiracy theorist survivalist extremist.  At least that's what the signs all over his gate (Heaven's gate according to the signs) led us to believe.  We got Sawyer cleaned up and finally made it to the Raton Best Western.  It was a late night.

Sunday, our last day went much smoother besides the vomit caked to the ceiling and windshield.  We started the day swimming and eventually hit the road.  Sawyer did better and we made quite a few stops to play football and eat.  Amazingly it was in the 70s all day and we hit some rain.  It was a gorgeous day.

Everyone did great in the car.  Paul did not sleep much, but he didn't cry much either.  He was just a champ.