Estes Park: Day 1

I'm stealing a page from the Solars and am blogging our trip - and while my photos will never be even a tenth as lovely as theirs, I still love the idea of blogging your vacation day by day, like a travel diary. Write it down while it's still fresh in the mind, right?

So here we go, our first day traveling.



We left the house about 5:30a to head to the airport. This was our first time flying with Peter and I was kinda nervous about it, but we took our friends' tips to heart and it turned out great, I'd say almost perfect - he fussed a little a few times, when we tried to shift him from lap to lap (when he wasn't exactly in the mood to switch) but quieted down quickly each time. No screaming, no tantrums, no squirming or crying - the only issues were that he kept trying to touch the guy's hair in the seat in front of me, but frankly I can't blame him. I mean, who doesn't want to touch some white dude's blonde curly Afro? That's just unusual, when will we ever see one of those again.

So anyhoo, all in all, a good good baby. Now we shall see if we have the same luck on the trip back...



We got our rental car without a hitch, and Peter zonked as soon as we started moving. Poor thing, he was so off his schedule today.


We stopped at Walmart to grab supplies (diapers, wipes, sunglasses because we both forgot ours at home...). Then we hit up Oskar Blues for lunch - good food and good beer. And Peter got a balloon. OMG, a balloon! He played with that darn thing through the entire meal, he adores it.

Mmm, good stuff.

After the restaurant we headed to Estes Park.

Peter was less than impressed with this part of the drive, I think he was just tired of traveling at this point. He ended up falling asleep in the car yet again, so we just drove around town checking things out, then made a stop at Safeway for milk and snacks for our room.

We also hit up the park (um, before Safeway and the kid falling asleep in the car; I'm a little out of order here). Anyhoo, here's our rental car! A Ford Focus, we just can't seem to get away from them.

Peter was not a huge fan of the merry-go-round. Ah well, he'll grow into it someday.

Playground equipment, that's more his style.

He was also fascinated with the chat on the ground. And the bits of sticks that he found there. We just played in the chat for a good ten minutes.

There were a bunch of cool rock formations so we decided to do some "rock climbing". Which he loved, go figure.

Finally he had a good run in the grass before we headed back to the car to leave. No wonder he passed out so quickly once he was strapped in.

Finally we headed to the Lodge - we are staying at the YMCA of the Rockies, they kind of specialize in family camps and family reunions. Now, I just want to say that this place has a sprawling campus of cabins, lodges, activity buildings, tennis courts, pool, private dining halls and playgrounds, on and on and on. But our lodge? It is the oldest one on the campus, hands down, and also appears to be the only one with no air-conditioning (see: ugly building on the right, not the pretty one with balconies and such on the left).

Also no TVs.

And the decor looks out of the 80s. However! We do have stellar WiFi service in our room, so I'll take it.

We opened the two windows, put a window fan in one, and enjoyed it. I mean, it's in the high 80s but with virtually no humidity, so it doesn't feel too terribly bad (I will admit though for the first few hours while we waited to cool down a bit, no one in our room was wearing pants).

That didn't deter the Doots from more quality balloon time. That balloon, it has been his constant companion.

Funny thing to note: once we got in the room I got busy unpacking all our bags. Peter toddled around after me while I unfolded clothes, and put toiletries in the bathroom. He really dug the bathroom. So I kept unpacking, shuffling things to new drawers, etc. And then I realized: Peter was going in and out of that bathroom a whole lot... Fearing the worst I ran in there, to discover that he had taken all the toys and books out of his bags, and "put them away" in the tub.

We met up with family for dinner, then Pete and I headed back to the room so he could hit the hay (Scott is still gone, attending the first night family meeting). Hence the available time to download pictures, sort through them, and write a blog post...

So off to bed we go. And I am kinda dreading waking up in the morning, as I can only imagine Peter's response when he sees that helium balloon lifeless on the floor.