Vacation Recap 2018

We survived vacation! It's far too soon to ask us what we'll contemplate as our next vacation as we need some time between the challenges of the last few weeks and whatever we do in the future. We need some time to dull the memories of the challenges (the early mornings, the whining, the crying, the complaints and the feeling of "Why does everything have to be so hard with Teddy?").

With that said, we managed to turn things around once AJ recovered from his hiking injuries and Teddy permitted us to sleep through the night (only to be awakened by children kicking us in the face, which is perfectly normal when you're a parent).

We revisited some of our favorite places for at least the third time: Rocky Mountain National Park, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. We relived the memories of our first trip to Colorado with Great Sand Dunes and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Parks. We explored a few new places like Dinosaur National Monument, which was really awesome, and Hovenweep and Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monuments, which were both interesting in their own rights and neat places to explore.

We used to pick a park and thoroughly explore it, capturing most of the highlights, so we didn't feel like we had that much unfinished business there. Our style with children has become much more of hit the highlights, do what we can reasonably and accept that there will always be more we want to see and do in most of our parks.

One of the highlights from this trip include the hike to Gem Lake, despite it being the hike that broke AJ. It was someplace in Rocky Mountain where we hadn't explored and was a really pretty, fun hike.

Gem Lake. In the rain. Not pictured: the hail or the miserable children.

Another highlight was our time in Great Sand Dunes. We spent the hot afternoon exploring Zapata Falls, which was new to us. It was a short 1/2-mile hike up a hillside and then a brief walk through a creek to a beautiful canyon waterfall. Absolutely stunning for the relative ease of the hike, although the road in to the trailhead is quite bumpy. We replenished at the same brewery and restaurant where we ate 11 years ago with delicious food and great service before heading back to play in the sand dunes. The boys absolutely loved the sand dunes!

This is actually in Arches, but you can tell how popular sand is with the boys!

One highlight yet reality check was the Fiery Furnace in Arches, which is a restricted use area that requires a permit or a ranger-guided hike. We reached out back in January to inquire about Teddy being carried on the hike and worked with a great ranger who explained the hazards yet granted us permission to do so. We were all set to hike until Dave made (probably the really wise) decision to remain behind with Teddy because Teddy woke up crabby that morning. A ranger-guided hike meant we needed to remain with the group, so there would be no escaping or appeasing an unhappy Teddy. Dave graciously stayed behind with Teddy despite really wanting to do this hike, so that AJ and I could ramble scramble through the rocks. Dave and Teddy made the most of their time exploring some 4-wheel drive roads through different parts of the park. I'm hopeful that in the future we could get permits to go explore on our own as Teddy gets a bit steadier on his feet ... or before he's too big for us to carry.

Family photo at Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

We're not sure what future vacations will hold for us. This trip reinforced the reality that our vacations of years past will not be possible for the future, so we'll need to figure out how to make the most to create family times together that are fun memories.