Another substantial driving day today, but still felt pretty minor compared to yesterday.  We were a little slow getting moving, having not quite caught up with last night’s transition from Central to Eastern time.  We had stayed in a cabin (“kamping kabin” as they irritatingly call them, which almost made me not stay there) at another KOA, chosen for convenience, and actually found this one to be a step up from the others we’ve stayed at – convenient to the highway but not right on top of it, and very large and wooded.  There was also a pool with a water slide, and we were anticipating difficulties getting the kids to leave without trying it out (since it didn’t open until 11).  We needn’t have worried, however – the unseasonably cool weather continues and we were all still huddled in our sweatshirts when we eventually departed.  (Don’t get me wrong – that factor alone would not have been enough to keep the kids off the waterslide.)  The worst thing about this KOA is that their brochure promised free coffee in the office and when I eagerly went to take them up on it, found only a dry, empty coffee pot.

 

About three and a half hours of driving brought us to Shenandoah National Park.  We drove through on the famous Skyline Drive, atop a ridge in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and luckily found it not at all terrifying.  The air was wonderfully cool and fresh and piney smelling, and we opened all the windows and enjoyed the scenery.  We happened to arrive at the visitor center just in time for the kids to do a junior ranger program on nature journaling, and then set off on a hike the ranger had recommended called Stony Man (which actually covers a bit of the Appalachian Trail).  It was a fairly easy hike – a 1.6 mile loop leading to the summit of the second highest mountain the park – but Lanie is reaching the end of her rope with any kind of hiking, so threats and bribery were required to get her to the top.  (Our main threats on this trip consist of work detail (mainly dishwashing duty) and loss of dessert privileges, and bribery is usually food-related.)  The view was stunning and well worth it, and the trip back down was quick and easy.  Later we stopped at the road at an overlook to see where we’d hiked – the mountain is shaped like a reclining man gazing lazily up at the sky.

The afternoon nearing an end, we set off for an additional two and a half hour drive to DC (or actually, to our friend Kathleen’s house in Bethesda, MD).  On travel days we usually stop at a restaurant for dinner, which keeps the children from mutinying over the peanut butter lunches.  Today this was particularly necessary because we didn’t even really eat lunch – our car supplies are running low (just about out of peanut butter and beef jerky!),  and we didn’t want to take the time to stop, so lunch consisted of a can of honey-roasted peanuts and various other scraps from the snack box.  (The kids didn’t even complain about missing lunch – I think the monotony has successfully demoralized them to the extent that they didn’t even notice.)  So we were off to Applebees, which turned out to be a good choice because apparently kids eat for $.99 on Tuesdays.  (This was not quite as good of a deal as it could have been, since Zoe has now decided that her tastes are too sophisticated for the children’s menu.)

We successfully reached Bethesda just after 8pm, and it was wonderful to have a friendly house to arrive at rather than another campground or hotel room.  Of course, I think we managed to arrive at the worst possible time and completely sabotage the Keller/Volchok’s bedtime routine, but all the kids immediately started having a great time together and we did too.

***

Did you know that we’ve been to the first two tourist attraction in the US?  The first was Niagara Falls and the second was Mammoth Caves.  They both opened within a few years of one another in the early 1800s.

                Now that I’ve established myself as an authority on US travel, let’s see what else I can tell you.  Surely you knew that Colonel Sanders was born in Kentucky because of the chicken, but did you know that Lee Majors is also from Kentucky?  He is, and just a few towns over from where the Colonel’s birthplace is marked with a KFC Café.  I don’t have many regrets about this trip, but I’m thinking now it would have been nice to stop by there.  It smelled like free chicken as we were driving past.

                We’ve passed many so many notable things that I can’t recall them all.  I know we passed through the home town of Little Miss Tiny Kentucky 2011, but I can’t remember her name or which town it was. Surely someone will pipe in with this information within a few minutes after this blog is posted.

                Several signs have pointed out Civil War battles that took place right along the side of the road.  We have not suffered any anti-North bias because of our New Hampshire license plate, though.  Rather, things are starting to look like home.  The hills here look like our hills, though the valleys and fields here look a little more productive than the ones around here.  If they put a road atop some of the Presidentials, it would be very similar to Shenandoah National Park (not that I’m advocating this, by the way).  

Once we got in the DC metro area, the cars started looking like ours.  Minivans have replaced pickup trucks.  Zoe asked a few weeks ago if we lived in the only part of the country that had neighborhoods.  We’re giving the kids exposure to vast swaths of the US that you can see from the highway.  Well, here we are tonight in a very nice house is a very nice neighborhood in Bethesda.  It all seems very close to home.

We had a nice relaxing morning today, since we’d booked a cave tour that started at 10, and was only a short walk away.  (The best part of the Mammoth Cave campground is that it’s so close to the visitor center and all the tours, along with many hiking trails.  We’ve become accustomed to all the huge national parks where you might have to drive half an hour to get to where you want to go.  We love it when we arrive someplace where we can set off on foot and give the poor van a break.)

Mammoth Cave is thought to be the largest cave in the world, and much of it is still unexplored.  There are quite a variety of different tours here, ranging from short and easy to long and strenuous.  We chose a middle path, and went with a two-hour, moderate difficulty tour called the New Entrance tour.  (It was not actually all that strenuous, since most of the walking was down stairs, but since the stairs were very steep and spanning deep chasms below, it was definitely not for the acrophobic.)  This was probably my favorite cave of the trip – the cave scenery was impressive and the ranger was knowledgeable and fun. 

In the afternoon we dragged the kids (or at least 2/3 of them required dragging) on a hike down past the natural entrance of the cave.  In the other caves we’ve visited, there was never much of a natural entrance – sometimes a small hole in the rock that the guide would point out on your way through the revolving door that they’d drilled into the cave for tours.  This cave had a real entrance like you’d picture a cave should have – a great black opening in the hillside, with cold air rushing from it.  You could walk into the “vestibule” without a tour, and we even saw a bat hanging on the wall.  Further along the hike, we saw the place where the underground river that had formed the cave emerged and joined the Green River above ground.

We’d planned to do another hike into a sinkhole, but Lanie was just about at the end of her rope (her enthusiasm for hiking having been on the wane for several days), and Bob and I weren’t at our best either, since we both seem to be coming down with something.  So it was a quiet afternoon at the campground, which now – on Sunday afternoon – had become almost as much of a ghost town as Hannibal.  Tonight we had a campfire – probably our last, so we finally used up the rest of our s’more supplies.

***

This is considered one of the three crown jewels of America’s caves (along with Carlsbad Caverns and Jewell Cave) according to our guide Ranger Steve. This gave me a pang because, as you know, we passed on Jewell Cave when we were in South Dakota.  Ranger Steve said that Jewell Cave really pales in comparison to Mammoth and Carlsbad, and that he wishes he went to Wind Cave instead of Jewell when he was in South Dakota.  This made me feel better.

                Truthfully, although the caves are very interesting here, the most remarkable part of our tour was the stairway that leads you down hundreds of feet of vertical channels once you enter at what they call the “New Entrance.”  They wind among the rocks and give brief glimpses of the 100-foot drops stretch below.  Of course, by now we know that I eat 100-foot drops for breakfast with my granola bars, so I really enjoyed this part of the journey, though some of our co-spelunkers had trouble with it. 

                Ranger Steve said the man who created this entrance and exploited the caves in the 30s built wooden stairs down.  When it came under the NPS, they ripped out the wooden stairs and contracted out to have metal stairs built.  Nobody could figure out how to do it until one submarine contractor came along.  His company took six years, but they engineered what I think is a marvel.

                Another highlight of our cave tour: We got to see a bat and cave crickets.  Unfortunately, the tour where you get to see the eyeless cave fish was sold out.  All-in-all, though, I am happy with our cave adventures on this trip.   It’s always nice and comfortable down there, just remember to bring your sweatshirt.

                We’re down to just one night in the tent left.  Then it’s bed, beds, beds all the way home.  

After another hearty breakfast, we sadly said goodbye to the Drury Inn and headed over to the St. Louis Zoo.  Unfortunately we couldn’t walk there.  After a lovely day with no driving at all, we paid the price by getting caught in various construction detours and, later, zoo traffic, but with the help of our GPS we eventually arrived in Forest Park, home of the zoo.

It was another beautiful day – sunny and low 80s – and the zoo was a great way to spend our morning.  Since it was Saturday, it was pretty crowded, and I was almost wishing for a little of the ghost-town feel that we’d had in Hannibal.

We wanted to get on the road by around 1:00, so we hit upon the brilliant scheme of withholding lunch until we left the zoo.  That eventually got the kids out of there without a battle (possibly because they were weak from hunger).  Then it was our usual lunch buffet in the car: peanut butter and bread, peanut butter and tortilla, peanut butter and banana, or peanut butter and apple.  (Also, we have sun nut butter.)

We had around a 5 ½ hour drive to Kentucky, so we decided to stop for dinner.  (The vision of a restaurant is one thing that really keeps the kids going these days.)  However, it never seems to fail that when dinnertime arrives, we’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing to be seen but farms and trees.  In this case, we eventually happened upon a Dairy Queen – not Bob’s and my first choice, but one that was met with much enthusiasm from the back seat.  Did you know the kids’ meals there come with a whole soft serve ice cream cone?  We are thinking of our friend Jamie, who practically had Dairy Queen cater his wedding.

We got to Mammoth Cave National Park with some daylight still left.  Although the cave is of course the main attraction here, there are also miles of unspoiled countryside, and we saw several deer and turkeys.  In stark contrast to Hannibal, the Mammoth Cave campground was hopping.  It was a Saturday night, and people were living it up.  Still, we had a nice large site among the trees, and speedily set up our tent for the last time. 

***

From Bob:

We have not crossed so many states in one day since we entered Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah again.  This time is it was Illinois and Indiana (both of which we passed through on the northern run), sandwiched between Missouri and Kentucky.

                We definitely did cross the Ohio River this time, a few hours after the Mississippi.  Aside from that it was an uneventful drive, save for the mess getting out of Forest Park in St. Louis.  It was a beautiful summer day – mild for August – and everyone seemed to want to go to the zoo.

                We have been very fortunate weather-wise.  It is not oppressive at all.  The mid- to high 80s feel fine when humidity is low.  We have been sparing on the A/C in the car and not suffering too much for that. 

             We have not calculated our gas efficiency yet, but we’ll have to factor in an interesting (maybe) car-related note that some people may have realized: The gas has changed as we move back east.  Somewhere along the line out west the regular gasoline became to 85 octane, though the prices were similar all along the way.  I thought this was strange, but figured maybe I was imagining things; but, behold, we get back close to the Mississippi and the octane for regular gas goes back up to 87, where I always thought it had been.  What happened to those two octane?  Did they get lost in the high altitude?  Why was I paying just as much for 85 as I am now for 87?  Can I get a refund?

Today, right after breakfast, we set off on a 15-minute walk to the long-awaited City Museum.  This place really defies description, and I have to assume is unique in all the world.  It is not, as you might think by the name, some dry historical, educational kind of place.  Instead, it is a kid’s (or kid-at-heart’s) dream come true.  It is not, however, a place for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.  Or claustrophobic.  Or inflexible.

This place used to be a shoe factory.  It’s since been taken over (presumably by some kind of brilliant and crazy mad-scientist-type) and turned into the most eclectic “museum” you’ve ever seen.  Almost everything is constructed from found and salvaged materials.  There are no maps.

On the 11^th floor roof, you’ll find a school bus hanging off the corner (you can sit in the driver’s seat, actually off the edge of the building).  You can ride a Ferris wheel, which evidently has been

 considerably souped up, since it goes about five times faster than any Ferris wheel I’ve ever been on, and gives you the distinct impression that you’re going to soar off the edge of the roof as you come down.  You can climb a 3-story cage tunnel up into the sky, then take a deep breath and plunge down the steep, fast slide underneath the tunnel.  You can climb and slide and swing and hop in various structures everywhere you look.

When you’re tired of the roof, you can go inside and take a 10-story spiral slide down to the bottom level.  The slide is inspired by the old spiral slide that shoes traveled down in the factory, and looks similar.  It’s inside this eerily lit industrial courtyard, and involves plunges into darkness and strange flickering lights.

The slide will let you out into the cave.  This is a multi-level, dimly lit area full of tunnels, wire ladders, slides, and rock carvings.  A huge pipe organ resides above, playing creepy music.  Some of the tunnels are so small you have to crawl to get out, and your parental commitment will be tested when you have to follow your four-year-old into a dark hole, where you find the floor dropping out beneath you.  (Eventually, your four-year-old will crawl into a space you just can’t fit into, and you’ll give up and hope that she manages to find her way back to you at some point.)

Heading back outside, you’ll find wire tunnels everywhere, spiraling up to the sky and leading high above the heads of those below.  Every now and then you’ll come across a slide hidden in the tunnel-work, and bravely plunge down it, unsure of where you’ll end up.  (If you follow your children, sooner or later you’ll find yourself fighting your way uphill in a tunnel that is really not designed for someone your size.)  And everywhere, there is elaborate and beautiful artwork built into everything.

There are still four other floors to explore.  Maybe you’ll see a circus act, or maybe you’ll crawl through the tunnels that underlie the circus bleachers.  You can play in a huge indoor skate park (but without skates), or view the world’s largest pencil or largest pair of underwear, or take a train ride through a creepy museum of neon signs and old carnival equipment.  (This part reminded me of our Scooby Doo Wii game, which is set in an old abandoned toy factory.)  You can see turtles and fish in the undersea area, which is covered with beautiful mosaics everywhere you look.  If you want to go from one floor to another, you can take the stairs – or you can find a Slinky-like coil of wire that lets you climb there, hanging over empty space.  And there is much, much more.  We were there for the entire day.

I still don’t think I’m doing this place justice.  Maybe you should look at the web site (http://www.citymuseum.org)  But really, that probably won’t help either.  You should just go there.  We’ll come with you.

***

From Bob:

There was a lady sitting next to me down in the lower level of the caves and she told me her family has been to the City Museum about 20 times.  Her kids love it.  The family was from Akron.  Akron, she said, was about eight hours away from St. Louis.  I asked her if there wasn’t a City Museum in Cleveland or Cincinnati.  She said there wasn’t a place like this anywhere else.

                That’s about all I can say about the City Museum, except to add that is not a place where one asks, “Should I do this?”  The only question at the City Museum is, “Can I do this.”  Anything you can figure out you can do. 

The whole room was detailed mosaics like this one

                Also, although it might not show up in the pictures, I went on the Ferris Wheel, the school bus, and the big mantis slide on the rooftop, and – although I still can’t believe it – I made it up the green tower to the airplane, then off the wing to the other airplane, and then over to the castle.  There were many other climbs and slides, but that was the hairiest.

                The Drury Inn provided us with three meals today – breakfast, including nice waffles, biscuits and sausage patties; lunch, which was mostly bananas and peanut butter taken from the breakfast spread; and dinner.  The seasoned taco meat and refried beans were just as good on a hot dog as they were on the nacho chips.

***

From Zoe:

We went to the City Museum.  It was awesome 

but very hard to describe.  First we went to the roof.  On the roof there was this big white thing going up.  It was like a tube with a slide underneath.  We went 

on it lots of times.  There were also stepping stones, a rope swing, a Ferris wheel, a slide where you could climb up the rope on one side and slide down the other, and a school bus hanging off the roof you could go in.  Near the rope swing was a ten story slide.  The slide went down to the caves.

The caves were my favorite part of the City Museum.  They are awesome.  They have places to climb and secret passages and no maps and are lit up creepily and dimly.  Mom let us wander the caves and explore them.  Next we went to a undersea area.  It was awesome.  Then we went to the huge outdoor structure to climb on.  It was awesome.  There were jets high in the air and wire tunnels and all kind of stuff.  We had lots of fun there.

We’ve reserved this morning for seeing the sights of Hannibal.  We considered skipping it and lighting out for St. Louis immediately, but couldn’t stand to admit this whole side trip to Hannibal was a waste, so we went ahead into town and got tickets for the Mark Twain complex.  It was actually a pretty nice set of buildings (Mark Twain’s boyhood home, Becky Thatcher’s home (under construction), Huck Finn’s house, and a few other miscellaneous dwellings), plus a pretty elaborate museum.  But again – almost no people.  We’re left wondering whether the whole town is a front for some sort of drug running operation or something, because it’s mystifying how anything can stay in business.  In any case, we considered the morning fairly well spent, and headed on to St. Louis in the afternoon.

 (We passed the car time happily with a new game Zoe read about.  One person is “it”, and the others come up with a silly phrase.  “It” has to answer every question with the silly phrase, without laughing.  Most of the family was taken down quickly by “Haggle snaggle huggle snuggle I love Justin Bieber” and the others quickly succumbed to “It was Grandma on a motorcycle with Grammy in the side car” (which spawned many interesting questions).)

We’re treating ourselves in St. Louis, staying at the Drury Inn & Suites.  We have a suite in this nice downtown hotel, which has actually turned out to be a very good deal because it includes free parking, breakfast, and “the 5:30 kick-back”, which is essentially a free dinner plus up to three free drinks each for Bob and me. 

We got in early enough that we decided to head to the Arch, about a 10 minute walk away.  It was around 2pm by this time, and we’d figured out that we’d actually not gotten around to eating lunch (somehow, no one was clamoring for peanut butter sandwiches in the car again), so we stopped at a convenience store and picked up some (suspicious but delicious) chicken fingers and a box of triscuits, found a picnic spot in the park by the Arch, and called it a meal.  At least enough to tide us over until our 5:30 kick-back.

We all got tickets to go up in the Arch, even Bob (though I think this was only because he didn’t want to embarrass himself on this blog.  In the old days there’s no way  I would have gotten him anywhere near this place.)  The visitor center is underground, so that the Arch sits alone on a grassy lawn.  From the center, you sit in a small pod-like contraption (conveniently for us, with 5 seats) that travels up to the top.  It has to change directions as it moves up the Arch, so it kind of feels like a Ferris wheel car.  Interestingly, the doors were clear glass, so you could see the inside of the Arch and all the elevator machinery as you were going up, which was pretty fascinating.

The top of the Arch feels like nothing so much as an airplane, with the same kind of carpet smell and stale, pressurized air.  There are small windows on either side with expansive views.  Though it was a hot, sunny day, we noticed that it was hazy out on the western horizon – and sure enough, by the time we got back down, a thunderstorm was rolling in.  After the worst of it was over, we decided to brave the storm.  It had becoming beautifully cool out, and it seemed like a fun adventure running through the rainy city and watching the lightning in the distance as the storm moved away.

Best of all from the kids’ perspective: we got back in time to use the pool before dinner.  And get some free popcorn, which is another service this wondrous hotel offers.  And after dinner, we did something else we haven’t done in four weeks – watched TV.  (Also, the dinner included both macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers.)  Could this get any better?  Yes, as it turns out, it could – stay tuned for tomorrow.

***

From Bob:

As if we didn’t spend enough time driving across Kansas last night, today it was here to torment us again.  We eventually got to the children’s museum in Topeka (another children’s museum!  The kids couldn’t believe their luck) which provided a good diversion for a couple of hours.  Then it was on to Kansas City, a destination the kids have been awaiting with great anticipation. 

 As a reward for making it across Kansas, we treated ourselves to a night at the Great Wolf Lodge – a hotel with a huge built-in water park.  (The expectation of this place is what allowed us to pull the kids out of the children’s museum.)  As soon as we walked in the door, bathing suits were donned and the race to the water park was on.

The water park was a lot of fun.  There were five big slides – some of them began and ended in the indoor water park, but went outside in between.  There was a four-story “tree house” filled with climbing structures and lots of water features.  (Every few minutes a huge bucket on the top tipped and dropped 1000 gallons of water to the floor below – that is a lot of water.  Unlike the kids, I wouldn’t stand under it.)  There was a “lazy river” tubing float ride, a few pools, some small kids’ slides, and various other water-based activities.

Lanie was thrilled because she was able to go on almost everything, despite her age.  She has no fear of anything water-related, which is both a blessing and a curse.  (Luckily, she has no objection to wearing a life vest all day, which helps our stress level.)

For dinner we walked across the street to “Famous Dave’s Barbeque”, where, hungry from climbing all those water slide stairs, we proceeded to order way too much food.  Barbecue leftovers for breakfast tomorrow!

From Bob:

One of the drawbacks to three or four Disney vacations is that every trip you take tends to have mouse ears stamped on it.  You’ve already heard us mention Disneyesque a few times in relation to places with natural wonders that seemed too perfect to be natural.

                This place, the Great Wolf Lodge, does not exactly fall into that category.  It is the least natural place imaginable; but it is a wonder, and very Disneyesque.   It falls on the calculated, orchestrated, fabricated side of the mouse ears, very well done, in its way, but not a bit subtle.

                They pack a theme park into this hotel (www.greatwolf.com/).  They have their own lineup of cartoon characters who show up in the grand lobby and are on signs all over the hotel.  There are restaurants, themed hallways, and, of course, the water slides.  It’s pretty decadent, but it also meshes nicely with the way our trip is going. We can’t live by peanut butter, national parks alone, and wholesome family resorts alone.  I’ll admit that I’ve even purchased a few loaves of white bread on this trip – and not the crusty French or Italian kind, either.  But there are no regrets.

                If this, and the Discovery Center, are the memories that the kids bring home of Kansas, don’t be surprised if one or three of them wind up settling in Kansas City.  Or Topeka.     

At last it’s time to say farewell to the YMCA.  As a parting gift, we were able to sign all three girls up for a 9-10 am activity so Bob and I could pack up the car in peace.  (We’re quite impressed that everything still manages to fit after so many stops, when we know from past experience that stuff somehow seems to enlarge every time you take it out of the car and put it back in.)

Today’s end point is somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, but we broke up the trip by spending a lovely afternoon in Denver.  My cousin Dan moved there last month after getting a job dancing for the Colorado Ballet, and was kind enough (even though he’s a young, hip single with probably many better offers) to hang out with us – even through a trip to the Children’s Museum!  That’s family loyalty for you.

We had lunch at a place called “City, O City”, with very cool and unusual vegetarian food.  A fascinating array of different kinds of waffles predominated at our table.  Bob got some kind of cheesy waffle with roasted vegetables on top, and it was delicious.  The girls somehow got away with ordering the “waffle of the week”, which totally belonged on the dessert menu.

It became clear during this lunch that our children are starved for conversation with someone who isn’t us.  Poor Dan practically got whiplash trying to keep up with three different voices shouting at him non-stop. (See photos at left.  I think this particular conversation involved a very detailed account of Nadia’s horseback ride.)  Hopefully social skills will return once we’re back at home.

The Denver Children’s Museum is a very fun place.  We had only a couple of hours to play there before it closed, but I think the kids would have stayed all day if they could.  (This may indicate that in addition to conversation, they are also starved for toys.)  The main disappointment was that Dan decided to fake some mysterious injury so that he didn’t have to perform for us on the museum’s very realistic dance floor.

At museum closing time we got back in the car again, for a 5.5-hour trip to a campground cabin close to the highway in WaKeeney, KS.  It was just the right distance to drive, I think — late enough so that the kids fell asleep for part of the way, but not so late that Bob and I fell asleep at the wheel.  We’ve crossed back into Central time, so we’ve lost an hour – I have to say that gaining an hour was much more fun.

***

Three cheers for Dan. This guy had fulfilled any family obligations he may have had to us when he was ring bearer at our wedding (We don’t have access to them now, but the next time you’re at our house, check out our wedding picture.  He’s there.).  Certainly he could have been done with us after showing us to the coolest waffle house imaginable in Denver or anywhere else.  He’s got a bum leg, for heaven’s sake.  He’s got to rest up and mend so he can return to his ballet troupe and its performance of “Sleeping Beauty”.

                But no, he soldiered on, listening the whole time to whichever of us wished to ramble on about something in Wyoming or something else  about Utah.  Five people who have had no one but each other to talk to for three and a half weeks can prattle if they get a sympathetic target within earshot.  Ask Dan.

                The Children’s Museum held little interest for him, for sure, but it was a really nice stop for us.  We are connoisseurs of such places, having been to Children’s Museums in Boston, Providence, North Conway, Myrtle Beach, and, of course, Dover.  Denver’s stands up well to all of them.  It was not too crowded, nor too messy.  It accepted our Association of Children’s Museums reciprocal membership that comes with our Children’s Museum of New Hampshire super-membership (thanks to Grammy and Grampy).  There’s not much more we could ask for.

                Add the museum pass to the list of things that are helpful to have on a trip like ours.  Other things on the list are an iPod that can play through your car, a decent (but not too complicated) camera, an EZ Pass, a package of baby wipes, and a friend/relative every couple of states.  All these things are nice to have.

                Another travel tip (if you can stand one more): Driving through Kansas at night is preferable to driving through Kansas during the day.  This place is not ugly at all, but its reputation for geographic monotony is well earned.  Colorado had flattened out pretty much once we got to Denver, so by the time we hit Kansas we were missing the mountains for scenery.  Once it got dark, though, I could imagine mountains around us, or great lakes on either side of the road, and the single lights that were really someone’s silo could be ships moored for the night.

                It worked for me, anyway.  

                

It is fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.  We had originally planned on doing another day trip into Rocky Mountain National Park with the kids, but there’s so much that they want to do here that we quickly abandoned the plan.  This interval was intended for us all to get a little down time, and it’s been pretty relaxing. 

Nadia was happy because she finally got what she’s been waiting for the whole trip: a horseback ride.  We’ve been holding out for here, because unlike most places Lanie was allowed to ride with me so we could all go together.  Unfortunately this was only allowed on the shortest, most beginner-level ride, which was not really what Nadia had in mind – so she decided to spend all of her remaining trip money on an additional two-hour, more advanced ride for herself.

(After going on the one-hour ride with Lanie, I was very thankful we hadn’t been allowed on the two-hour.  Those saddles are not meant for two people, even two relatively small people.  Also, it was a big mistake to have had Lanie wear a helmet – I was expecting to find my chin was black and blue from the constant bumping.  Lanie wasn’t very comfortable either, and showed the most excitement when the stable came into sight on the return trip.)

Lanie was happy because there was a pool.  She’s been swimming every day, sometimes while the older girls have been at other activities that she’s too young for.  This pool is especially thrilling because she’s allowed to go down the water slide with her life jacket on, unlike most places where you have to pass a swim test.  Bob and I are somewhat waterlogged, eagerly awaiting the day when she can go into the pool by herself.

Zoe was happy with the vast array of activities that she could sign up for.  The possibilities are so exciting!  She told me early on that she might spend the rest of her trip money in the craft center, but she ran out of time after merely making a tie-dyed bandana and a mosaic.  She also did archery, and she and I participated in a rousing game of Capture the Flag.  (Three days later, we both still have sore legs from this endeavor.  I’m used to running, but not stop-and-go sprinting.  I’ve found it takes a lot out of you when you’re forty.  But I like to think that I helped our team to victory, even though I was about 25 years older than the average age of the participants.  When I got that thirteen-year-old with braces out of jail, I think I really earned some respect.)             

Bob and I were happy to have plenty of time to relax, in between dropping the kids off at various activities.  (You may have noticed that this resulted in a flurry of blog entries.)  We did plenty of things together too – family adventure games, mini golf, more bingo (our second night resulted in four prizes – and we all chose the gift certificate for a free brownie.  Score!)

***

From Bob:

We’re feeling laid back here at the Y, and it might be the mountain vibe or the family atmosphere.  More likely it’s the two all-you-can-eat meals back-to-back that have had let me towards food catatonia.  I looked at breakfast yesterday morning and saw a bowl of yogurt with granola, which closely resembled my typical trip breakfast.  This occupied a tiny corner of my tray, balancing a plate of two pancakes magically rolled around blueberries, two sausages, and a pile of potatoes.  Also there was some fruit and several small cartons of milk (really cold milk seems like a supreme luxury).   If anything, my dinner tray the night before was even more heavily loaded.

                So I’m a little stretched in the middle, which made me a liability in the life raft portion of the Family Adventure (no real life raft included, thankfully).  Babe the horse also suffered – although I showed excellent horsemanship – under my added weight.  Sorry, Babe.

                By night number three, we were back in the direction of our normal eating habits.  The notable exception is the addition of chicken to our Minute Rice dinner.  Our fridge let us extend our list of ingredients. 

                Good old Tonkawa Cabin is an oasis of comfort.  Once we moved over from the hotel – itself pretty plush with its bed clothes, towels, sink and shower – the girls were especially excited.  Nadia burst into the place and was in full discovery mode.  “There’s a utility closet!” she yelled.  Lanie checked out the full kitchen and exclaimed, “We have a BLENDER!”  She was only slightly less gleeful when she was told that what she spied on the counter was a coffee maker, not a blender.

                There hadn’t been such rejoicing in the family since I found my missing deodorant back in Yellowstone.  Happiest of all might have been the van, which one day only drove a mile to pick up Nadia at the livery after her two-mile ride. 

                Laid back with a little excitement is a nice way to spend your time.  Add to it the beautiful mountain scenery that surrounds this place, and it comes out to a pretty nice stop on the trail.  

Reunited after day camp

***

From Bob:

Jen and I are both in our 40s now, and it’s easy to think that we’ve passed the proverbial continental divide of our lives, ready to ride the gentle slope eastward and downward to our watery Atlantic graves.  I keep looking for signs of our aging, and they are there – or not there, as is the case with the hair on top of my head.  We might not be as bad off as I thought it was, though.

                Yes, we are tired a lot these days, with all the driving and seemingly-nonstop parenting, not to mention all the blogging.  Jen suggested that we bring the bikes along for this trip partly because she envisioned us getting up early and hopping out of our sleeping bags to zoom around the National Parks on two wheels.  In reality, we’ve found ourselves lingering in the sleeping bags most mornings.  Ok, it was cold in Yellowstone.  A grizzly attack might, MIGHT, have gotten us out of our sleeping bags before 7 (Mountain Standard Time). 

I think what’s really happening is the she and I are conserving our energy to help us deal with the constant threat of the unexpected happening on this trip.   The planning and preparation, as many people have noted in response to this blog, have been top notch, but the nature of such a trip means that something totally oddball can happen at just about any moment.  Kids just multiply the oddball chances.  Now, it is unlikely that Lanie would be kidnapped by bighorn sheep while we’re In the Rockies, but it’s a heck of a lot more likely to happen out here than it would be in New Hampshire.

So it is with much pride and not a little relief that I find that Jen and I were absolute go-getters today on a day when the unexpected was a little bit more at arm’s length.  With our kids in good hands and us on our way to the National Park to hike, Jen mused that what we should be doing is finding a bar in which we could drink and watch the Olympics. 

Why not, I ask, do both? 

I mean, we were in our 30s just a few short years ago.  Forget the fact that “Thirtysomething” was a tv show about old people.   We exercise regularly and eat wholesome foods.  We do not, usually, drink to excess. 

We tackled Cub Lake hike, more than five miles at altitude, in very good stride, eating our granola bar and apple lunches on the way.  Had option B not been available, we might well have gone on for another two miles to Fern Lake.  Heck, had Bear Lake Road been open or if the lady hadn’t warned us that the shuttle takes an hour and a half both ways (that can’t be possible, but we couldn’t risk it), we might have forgotten option B and gone for the Sky Pond trail. 

Option B worked fine for us, though.  A short drive into Estes Park, and after a brief distraction at a winery we got to the beer and Olympics that my good planning wife improvised on the way out the door.  We took corner seats and held up that bar for a good deal of ribbon twirling and hula hoop tossing.

And we still had enough energy after all that to be parents once 3 pm came around.  I don’t remember much about the afternoon and evening, but I’m pretty sure we did fine by our kids.

Today was one of our longest driving days – we were in the car for most of the day – and we survived it pretty well.  Fortunately, Lanie had to use the bathroom at an opportune time, since the exit we pulled off on had a nearby grocery store (for lunch provisions) and elementary school (with playground and picnic table).

After some driving that probably took years off the van’s life (see Bob’s account below), we arrived at Rocky Mountain National Park around 6pm.  The place we’re staying is in Estes Park, which is on the other side of RMNP, but we thought we’d drive through the park to see a bit of it on our way.  This involved taking the Trail Ridge Road, which is supposedly the highest continuously paved highway in the country.  If you’ve ever driven certain sections of the Pacific Coast Highway, you have an idea what this road is like – a harrowing series of switchbacks with sheer drops off the side and no guardrails.  It’s the kind of road where you feel that if you sneeze at the wrong time, you might easily plunge to your death.  It is also a beautiful road, with breathtaking mountain scenery and an interesting view of the tundra from above treeline.

After surviving this ordeal, we were happy to find a pizza restaurant in Estes Park (Cheesy Lee’s!) and then move on to our destination – the YMCA of the Rockies resort.  This is a very cool place, bordering on Rocky Mountain National Park, with tons of activities and amenities.  Tonight and tomorrow night we’re staying in a hotel room, and the two days after that we have a large 2-bedroom cabin, with a full kitchen.  (These cabins are very popular – despite calling on the morning of the first day that reservations opened several months ago, I wasn’t able to get the cabin for the full four days.)  Since 12 of the last 13 days have involved sleeping on the ground, we are all giddy with anticipation of what we’ll experience – beds with sheets!  Daily showers!  Clean towels!  Electricity and plumbing!  It’s all very exciting.

***

From Bob:

This was not my favorite day of the trip.  I am nervous enough about the car being overloaded and past its prime without us going over multiple switchback roadways to ever higher mountain passes.  (It was even worse from the passenger seat. – Ed.) (Thanks for mentioning that, Ed.  I can concur completely since I was in the passenger seat for more than half the trip – Bob.)  Route 70 itself offers some nice vertical action as it climbs from Grand Junction through Vail. This is just a warm-up, though; the fun really starts when you get on Rt. 40 near Empire and start climbing through the fearsome Berthoud Pass (elev. 11,315 ft.).  Then the road descends for a while through Winter Park.  In Granby It starts climbing again until you enter Rocky Mountain National Park and think you must be near the top. 

                Not long after the visitor’s center we stopped to see a moose (rule #1 for spotting wildlife on National Park roads: pull over where you see lots of people with cameras all looking in the same direction), and a man told us he had passed a herd of elk on the Trail Ridge Road.  What he didn’t mention was that some of the elks’ antlers were actually poking into the upper atmosphere, thus making them the only elks in the country that are under the jurisdiction of both the National Park Service and NASA.

                That Trail Ridge Road CLIMBS, baby. Up over 12,000 feet it goes, and for most of it, there’s nothing at the edge of the road to keep you from taking the very fast way down.  We saw those NASA elk and they were shaking their big antlered heads at us (almost certainly causing several satellites to change their orbits) thinking, probably: “What a bunch of idiots driving around the above-treeline tundra with their white knuckles and squeaking breaks.  This place is really not meant for them, poor two-legged round heads. When will they learn their limits?”

                I do not wish to talk about this part of the trip any more, except to say that at one point – at 6:30 pm according to our trip journal – we crossed over the Continental Divide for the last time (at Milner Pass, elev. 10,759) heading east.  This ensures us a gentle, gradual downhill glide all the way back to New England.

                Instead, I will mention a cool thing we did last night back on the flat desert.  Ever since we pitched camp in a mild drizzle, it never looked like raining again there in the Devil’s Garden.  So, we decided to take the rain fly cover off our tent for the last night.  It’s very nice star gazing there, and it was a thrill gazing at the heavens from inside our sleeping bags, inside our tent. 

                It also gave us a slight head start on packing up our belongings for the long, winding, ascending drive to Colorado, since we could fold up the fly and its pole the night before.  Perhaps because of this little edge, we were able to hit the road at 9:09 (according to the trip journal), a full six minutes before our slated departure time.  We had told the girls that getting out on time would be considered their Feat of Strength for the day, qualifying them for a present from the present box.  The later feat of strength – running around the RMNP Alpine Visitor’s Center parking lot to test the effects of high altitude/low oxygen – was strictly optional.