It’s Thursday and we’ve been on the road for nearly two weeks. The kids are holding up wonderfully. I suppose that part of their resilience comes from having such a good time at nearly everything we’ve been doing. It has been a great trip. Our first portion, getting to Minneapolis, was a lot of driving, but we were all eager to get going and we had some fine time for seeing the sights. The middle portion (Minneapolis, Okoboji, Omaha, and Colorado) has been a lot of socializing and the kids have had a great time with our friends and family. Tomorrow, we start on the last leg, the western spectacles of the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. We’ll have the longest drive of our trip tomorrow, a projected 513 miles, so we’re going to try to keep down the driving here.
Yesterday, we had a full day, though things weren’t working out as well as everyone would like early in the day. We drove up to Steamboat Lake, which turned out to be uncomfortably unshaded. We took a small, nice hike and then had a picnic in the one shady corner of the parking lot. Marcus was disappointed not to be able to rent boats, but we decided instead to come back to town and go to the hot springs pools. Unfortunately, by the time we all got into the pools (and started using the awesome water slide), a thunderstorm came in and the pools had to be cleared. We headed back to the house for a snack and a game of Carcassonne, and then back to the pools (after the clouds cleared) just in time to have one last trip down the slide, which closes hours before the rest of the pools do. We had a great, relaxing time in the pools after that. Marina and Marcus were on the diving board for nearly an hour and Izzy and Rebecca were splashing around in the different pools. We all felt much better. In the evening, we took in some fine Italian food from a nearby restaurant and stayed up late chatting.
It’s another beautiful day, sunny and warm. Maybe waterfalls, maybe a bike ride. One last day with the Flaxes.
July 12th, 2012 at 8:11 am Sounds like youmade the best of some disappointments yesterday. Hope your last day together was more smooth. Good luck with your long drive tomorrow. Please send hugs to everyone. Normandy is relentlessly rainy. The D-Day memorial and cemetery are beyond moving. Hope your drive is less torrid on this leg. xoxox