The Story of a Minivan

Eleven years ago, I sat behind the wheel of a minivan for the first time. I pushed back the seat to make room for my belly and adjusted the mirror so I could check on my two-year-old daughter sitting in a carseat in the back.
“What do you think?”
Eva popped her thumb out of her mouth. “Good,” she said, and stuck her thumb back in.
Toby, sitting in the passenger seat, eyed me skeptically. “I’m still just not sure about the whole minivan thing.”
I rubbed my belly, swollen with baby #2. “I think we’re the definition of the whole minivan thing.”
And so, in a used car lot in Virginia, we traded in my Subaru Wagon, bought for driving up to Tahoe to ski with friends on the weekends, for a two-year-old Toyota Sienna, bought for carseats and carpools.
“Let’s name her Cara,” Eva said. So we did.

I’m not the type of person who cares about cars. If you’ve seen Cara, you already know that about me. Her hubcaps are missing, the visor has been replaced (with a tan visor that doesn’t match the gray interior), and her upholstery is basically made of Pirate’s Booty at this point. But since the day we drove out of the parking lot of that dealership, we have lived in five different houses in three different states (and one District), but she’s been with us since before Lucy was born, which may explain why I felt nostalgic about trading her in for a new car today.

We have a lot of memories in that car. Not all of them are great. If the soundtrack to my Subaru was a Pearl Jam’s Ten, the soundtrack for Cara’s first four years was The Wiggles’ Henry the Octopus. I listened to that song 195,073,243 times in that car. I also listened to a lot of crying in carseats and of course there was puking and quick stops to change diapers and kids arguing and me taking deep breaths to prevent myself from yanking the Wiggles CD from the CD player and throwing it out the window.

But there was also driving baby Lucy home from the hospital to our house in DC. There was me always asking Eva how Lucy was doing in the backseat and Eva checking on Lucy and, noting her big blue eyes, always answering, “She’s just peeking.”

There was my mom and me driving down to visit my college friends at the beach and finding out that Lucy had covered herself in markers on the way home.

There was driving baby Noni home from the hospital to our house in Frederick, Maryland.

There was the pipe cleaner sculpture that the girls made in the back of the car in Los Angeles. It grew every day. Whenever I dropped Lucy off at preschool, her teacher would always ask if she could look in the car to check on the pipe cleaner artwork progress.

There was the long drive from Los Angeles to Boulder. Which somehow also ended up with Lucy covered in markers yet again.

There were road trips to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maine, Vermont, Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon. Weekend trips to the mountains for camping and skiing. And of course hours and hours and hours of carpooling to dance and theater and riding and soccer.

When we bought Cara, we were just entering the “family with young kids” stage and it seemed like it would stretch on forever. These days, there are no more diapers or marker wars or Wiggles CDs. And Eva (now Eevee) will be driving herself in two and a half years. So I guess it makes sense that when we left Cara in the parking lot in a used car shop in Longmont, it felt a bit like saying goodbye to part of the girls’ childhood.

But as we drove off in Vana (a two-year-old Toyota Sienna whose current soundtrack is pop music, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars) with all the same people in the car, I realized that of course a car is just a car and it’s the people in it who make the memories.

Reflections on Almost Forty

come on sweetheart
let’s adore one another
before there is no more
of you and me – Rumi

This ain’t the same summer song that you used to know
‘Cause Jack left Diane thirty years ago
The world is spinning too fast for you and me – MKTO, American Dream

When I was seven years old, wearing no shoes and carrying a towel over my shoulder, I walked with my family down to our boat, The Mustard Seed, to watch the fireworks. We did it every year. It was one of the magical things about growing up in Vermont. Everyone would go out on their boats and we’d meet up with friends and tie the boats together. The kids would jump in the water while the adults chatted and had drinks as the sun went down. Then when the sun finally passed behind the mountains (late in the summer in Vermont), we’d sit back and watch the Burlington fireworks over the water. On the boat ride back to our neighborhood dock, I always fell asleep. That year, at seven, I was getting a little old for my dad to carry me back up to the house, but he still did. As usual, I woke up in my bed in the middle of the night and wondered momentarily how I got there. Then, remembering the boat ride and my parents tucking me into bed, I snuggled up next to my cat and fell back to sleep.

I feel the same way about turning forty this Saturday. How did I get here? My feet, bigger now, are still the same feet that padded barefoot down to the dock and my hands, wrinklier now, are still the same hands that reached out to pat my childhood cat. It seems impossible that thirty-three years have passed since that summer, and yet at the same time when I think about all that’s happened, of course I know how I got here.

“It’s just a number.” People keep saying that when I mention my birthday. Yes, it is just a number. But it’s a number that makes me think of other numbers. Like the number one. That’s the number of lives we get (unless, of course, it’s not, in which case please don’t let me come back in my next life as that scary spider that was in the girls’ bathtub the other day). Or the number eighty. That’s the life expectancy in Colorado. Which means that if I’m lucky, I’m probably about halfway through. It’s sobering.

Forty is also called midlife and of course we all have heard the term midlife crisis. I’m not having one. I’m okay with my wrinkling skin and if I get a new car this year it’ll be a newer version of our banged up minivan. But as I approach forty, I can’t help but thinking of all of the things that will never happen again. When I was younger, everything felt like it would last forever: riding around Lake Champlain on our boat, exploring islands and going out to lakeside dinners with my family and friends; lounging in my college dorm room, eating M&Ms and gossiping about the night before; hanging out at the park in Quito with Toby, talking about our future; drinking tea with friends when Eevee and Lucy were babies, when one afternoon could stretch out indefinitely. I didn’t think of those days as passing moments in time, but as days that would last forever.

Of course, even as those days are gone, great new experiences have replaced the old ones. My sister and I no longer dance in the basement to Michael Jackson records on our Fisher Price record player, but now I listen as my three girls belt out Bruno Mars songs that play on their iPads. I no longer gossip with my college friends about which boy I like, but instead I live with someone more wonderful than I could have imagined at the time. I no longer celebrate the fourth of July on The Mustard Seed, but this year we celebrated around a campfire, surrounded by mountains and pine trees, in Bogan Flats. And of course I still see my parents and sister, we just spend time together in Maryland, Rhode Island, North Carolina and Colorado instead of Vermont. (Or, this summer, in Ireland and France.) And we’ve added some great new kids and grown-ups to the mix.

I do miss Lake Champlain though. My sister and I spent most of our summer days skipping stones into the water and swimming out to the raft with our neighborhood friends. We would dive from the raft into the water to collect white rocks and clam shells and then pile them up on the raft to dry in the sun, while we lay on our bellies and dried in the sun as well. When I’m stressed, I still call to mind that feeling of the sun on my back and the gentle rocking of the waves under the raft.

And when I think of that, I guess I know what people mean when they say that forty is just a number. Moments of pure happiness seem to exist outside of numbers on calendars and clocks. As I marveled at the fireworks with my family when I was seven, I wasn’t thinking about what had happened yesterday or would happen tomorrow. I was simply and purely enjoying the moment. Perhaps the number forty is just a reminder to appreciate my days and the people in them.

 

 

 

Our Favorite Colorado Campsite So Far

Since we moved to Colorado, we’ve been in search of the perfect camping spot. We’re not that hardcore, so our basic criteria is that we have to be able to pull up to it in a car and to make a reservation in advance (nothing like pulling into a campground with three kids on a Friday night and finding nothing available). An ideal campsite should be quiet, shaded, have access to toilets (showers would be nice too), and access to good spots for hiking and swimming. Armed with our Colorado Campgrounds: The 100 Best and All the Rest book, you’d think we couldn’t go wrong. Yet somehow we always seem to forget to book camping spots until a couple of months before and everything decent is taken. This year, I was determined not to let that happen. Our friend Brenda suggested that we all camp near the Maroon Bells. So I opened the book in January and went online to make reservations for Silver Bar (booked), Silver Bell (booked) or Silver Queen (booked). People in Colorado take their camping seriously. So I searched for other sites in the area and made a reservation at Site 8 at Bogan Flats, which is located 22 miles south of Carbondale.

Here’s what we loved about Bogan Flats:

1) It’s near the town of Marble, CO, a tiny town with a population of 131, home to a fantastic BBQ restaurant. While I love campfire cooking, it’s also nice to break it up with some barbecue! The Tomb of the Unknowns and the Lincoln Memorial were built from marble from Marble and there are marble statues and huge chunks of uncut marble all around the town.

Lucy and Noni at the BBQ restaurant with Marble marble

2) It’s near a wonderful swimming spot. Okay, a wonderful Colorado swimming spot. The water is like 33 degrees, but the kids and dogs enjoyed playing in the water while the adults relaxed.

The beach, Colorado-style

The girls built a fairy town along the water. Nolan engineered a water system for the fairies.

3) The Crystal River Valley is the most beautiful part of Colorado I’ve seen yet. We hiked on a trail that was lined with rose bushes to a view of snow-capped mountains.

Amazing flowers along the trail

4) It was the cleanest and quietest campsite we’ve seen. Bob and Toby brought their guitars so we may have disrupted the quiet a little bit, but no one seemed to mind…

Noni and Toby rocking out

5) We slept to the sound of running water and crickets.

Noni checking out the Crystal River, right by our campsite

Bogan Flats isn’t perfect. The river behind the sites has a strong current (probably stronger this year than usual with all of the rain) so it’s not ideal for swimming and could be stressful with little kids. We drove into Marble (a five minute drive) for the swimming spot I mentioned. Also, some of the sites are better than others. I’d recommend sites 8, 9 and 12. And there are no showers, but of course that’s getting picky. (Still, four days and ten layers of sunscreen later, I started to really, really, really want a shower.)

We have had some amazing camping experiences in Colorado. Arapahoe Bay and the Sand Dunes were two of the most memorable. But as far as campsites go, Bogan Flats is probably my favorite so far. We will continue our search for the perfect Colorado campsite.  If you come across it, let me know!

 

A New Side of Colorado

Since we moved to Colorado five years ago, we have spent a lot of time in the mountains to our west. Open space starts a couple of blocks west of our house and I know every rock and turn on the goat trail that leads into the mountains. My version of Colorado is the same version you see on a Sierra Club calendar – snowcapped peaks and dusty, rocky trails. This summer I discovered a new side of Colorado.

A couple of months ago, Noni started horseback riding at Triple Creek Ranch.  The ranch is only ten miles from our house, but it’s ten miles of waving grasses, roaming horses and lots and lots of bikers. While I usually groan at all of the driving to different kid activities that I do, I love driving to the ranch and spending an hour sitting in an Adirondack chair in the country while Noni rides. It wasn’t long before I wanted to enjoy the mellow roads by bike as well.

Our first family bike trip was somewhat a disaster, as we got caught in a giant lightning storm. But a week later, on a beautiful blue-sky morning, Lucy and I decided to bike while Noni attended horse camp. I loved biking with her on the dirt roads. Only a few cars passed us on our nine mile ride. Then this morning, Toby and I rode to Hygiene for breakfast on the back porch of the Crane Hollow Cafe. Hygiene, with its cute cafe and market adjacent to a feed store, caters to both bikers and farmers. Turns out that the market in Hygiene also offers barbecue and music on Saturday nights. Sounds like a winning combination to me.

It’s wonderful to live so close the majestic mountains with their striking beauty, but there’s something really nice about the tranquility of the Colorado countryside as well. I’m looking forward to getting to know it better.

Breakfast in Hygiene

Spooky Scarecrow Lucy and I saw on our ride

Biking with Lucy on the dirt roads

Encounters with Moose

Something I learned this week: If a moose is chasing your children down a hiking trail, they will hike the entire seven miles of trail, quickly and without complaining. But let me back up a bit.

On Tuesday, the girls and I picked my mom up from the airport to take her to a cabin in Grand Lake, where she could acclimate to the altitude before biking over Hoosier pass and into Kansas with her best friend from elementary school. (Because they are awesome and also crazy.)  The cabin we rented was adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park, nestled in the trees with views of Columbine Lake, and full of moose paraphernalia: Moose paintings, moose photographs, moose books, a moose sculpture. When I flipped through the guest book, nearly every entry mentioned a moose sighting.

“We have to see a moose,” I announced. “Or I want a refund.”

“I don’t want to see a moose,” said Eevee.  “They’re scary.”

“How can you think they’re scary? They’re like giant deer.”

“Still,” she said.

“Well, I’m going to find a moose.”

We went for a walk around Columbine Lake that evening. No moose. We hiked past Adams Falls the next day (which, by the way, is a gorgeous) and I scanned the mountain meadows for wildlife. No moose. We paddle boated in Grand Lake, which is surrounded by mountain forestland. No moose.

Driving to dinner from our cabin that night, Lucy said, “You know, I’m going to start looking out for moose.”

I slammed on the brakes.

There, right in front of our car, was a female moose. She lumbered across the road and down into the woods. I pulled the car over and my mom and I jumped out to take pictures. We got a couple of blurry photos as she made her way into the woods. Then we spent the evening marveling that our first moose sighting had occurred a second after Lucy declared that she would look for moose.

That night, I read some fun moose facts to everyone.

“Moose are the only deer that can feed underwater. They have been known to dive underwater to reach plants on lake bottoms.”

We giggled, imagining a scuba diver’s reaction to a swimming moose.

“Moose can kick sideways.” 

We laughed, imagining a moose kicking his leg sideways to knock over a friend after he made a bad joke.

“Moose attack more people than bears and wolves combined. Worldwide, only hippopotamuses injure more people.”

Oh.

Okay, maybe Eevee had a point about them being a little scary.

The next day, slightly less enthusiastic about seeing moose, we headed into Rocky Mountain Park to hike the seven mile Green Mountain – Onahu Creek loop. I didn’t mention the distance to the girls. We would hike two miles to a mountain meadow and I figured if they were too tired, we’d just head back that way instead of doing the loop.

A mile into the heavily wooded trail, my mom stopped to pee. The girls and I walked about twenty feet ahead to wait. As we stood there, Eevee’s eyes widened.

“I see a moose,” she said, pointing.

I looked and saw nothing but trees.

“Yeah, right.”

“No, seriously, I see a moose.”

I looked again and still saw nothing. I rolled my eyes.

“MOM, I’m serious! There is a moose!”

Right then, my mom popped out of the woods and onto the trail again. Three feet behind her, a giant bull moose stepped onto the trail.

My poor mom. All she saw was the four of us, mouths open, fingers pointing, speechless. She too thought it was a joke. Until we turned and bolted up the trail.

She followed, asking, “What? What?” Then she turned around and saw him.

When we thought we’d gone a safe distance we stopped, gasping for breath. The moose was still heading toward us. All I could think was moose are as vicious as hippos, moose are as vicious as hippos… We kept running. The moose kept following. I’m not sure how long this went on, but finally we lost sight of him. We did not lose speed. We soon reached the meadow, but going back the same way was clearly not an option. The girls kept going and Noni did the longest hike of her life without so much as a squeak about slowing down.

Since we all made it home safe and sound, I’m grateful for the moose for encouraging us to hike the entire trail. And, having seen two moose, I enjoyed adding our entry into the guest book. I’m just hoping our next encounter with a moose isn’t 20 feet under water.

 

Hiking the Boulder Skyline Traverse Trail

South Boulder Peak  – Bear Peak – Green Mtn – Flagstaff Mtn – Mt. Sanitas

Approx 6,000 feet vertical gain, 16 miles

It’s easy to teach kids directions in Boulder. The plains are always to the east, the mountains to the west. The mountains here – white in the winter, green in the spring, brown in the summer – are a backdrop to our daily life. We hike them regularly, but it wasn’t until a week or so ago that I heard about the Boulder Skyline Traverse, where you hike all of the Foothill peaks in one day. I mentioned it to Toby and he loved the idea of hiking our skyline. He took this Friday off and this morning at 7:20 AM, we headed out to do it.

We started by driving our car to South Boulder and leaving it at the base of the Doudy Draw trail. By 7:40, we were on our way to Bear Peak. Not long after we started up the trail, I began to have my doubts. We brought our dog Gus with us and his legs are about as high as my ankles. Would he really be able to hike 16 miles and over 6,000 vertical feet? And, more importantly, would I? I can’t remember the last time I ran more than five miles and, aside from the Grand Canyon with kids in March, I haven’t hiked anything further than Sanitas all winter. Sanitas would just be the finishing touch of the hike we were doing today. The weather was perfect and the rocky trail was beautiful, but it felt like an intense StairMaster workout, if you tossed some snow on the StairMaster and made it really wobbly. I distracted myself by trying to find bears and mountain lions hiding in the boulders, which also helped to motivate me to hike faster. Two hours later, we neared the top and came to the burn line. We hiked through a charred landscape, with South Boulder peak to our south. Then we climbed up Bear peak and were rewarded with views of snowy mountains to the west and the city of Boulder to the east.

Fortunately, the next part of the hike was down hill. We hiked the steep slope down the back of Bear Peak, stopping once to dump snow out of our boots.

The trail flattened out and was pleasant between Bear and Green. We had an early (okay, really early. Does 10:47 AM count as lunch?) lunch on the side of the trail.

We continued on our way, with Gus walking in his usual spot: Directly behind Toby’s heels. He hasn’t yet figured out that he could avoid dirt in his face and a few accidental kicks to the nose if he moved over a little.

On the way down from Green a ditch cut into the trail, a sign of leftover flood damage. Gus, spotting a squirrel on the other side of the ditch, attempted to jump across and landed face-first in the dirt wall on the other side. He flipped backwards, landed on his feet and seemed unfazed by the whole experience. 

From Green, we then hiked down Flagstaff, which was my least favorite part of the hike since a road winds through the trail. But we had great views of the red roofs of CU and of the city of Boulder.

 

By the time we got down Flagstaff and to the base of Sanitas, it was 2:30. We had to pick up the girls at 4:00. Normally, an hour and a half would be plenty of time to summit Sanitas and make it home, but by this point we were feeling pretty sluggish and were worried about time. We skipped the summit and instead hiked up the Dakota Ridge trail and then back down the goat trail home.

We arrived home at 3:15, tired but happy after a long day outside. I love that we hiked nearly 16 miles and 6,000 vertical feet and yet never left the city of Boulder’s trails. We live in an amazing place.

And speaking of amazing, the MVP award of the day goes to Gus, who proved to be a tough little hiker, even with those short little legs.

 

 

 

Do’s and Don’t’s from our Grand Canyon Road Trip

We learned a few things on the way to and from the Grand Canyon. I thought I’d share a few of them here.

Do: Check out Mesa Verde. We were momentarily thrown off when we got to the visitor’s center and they told us it was another 45 minute drive into the park before we’d see any ruins. We paused for a minute, contemplating another hour and a half of driving on an already long driving day to the Grand Canyon, but figured we’d come that far, we had to see it. Plus, we were able to hitch a ride in our friends’ RV so it made the driving part a little more fun. Lucy learned about the Ancestral Pueblo people in school this year and was especially interested in crawling around the ruins. There are over 600 ruins in the park. In March, not all of them are open, but there is still enough to be well worth the drive.

Don’t: Stay at the EconoLodge in Cortez. Or at least don’t stay in it if the couple who stayed above us are staying above you. If you’ve ever stayed at a motel with paper-thin walls, you know what I’m talking about. This is a family-friendly blog so I will leave it at that…

Do: Stop at four corners. It’s one minute off the road and you’ll feel like you’re in a scene from a Coen brothers movie.

Don’t: Expect too much at four corners. Like I said, Coen brothers, not Disney.

Do: Approach the Grand Canyon at sunset. You might as well see it at its best for your first glimpse. While my kids were disappointed with the size of Mount Rushmore last year, they were sufficiently impressed with the Grand Canyon. It’s hard not to be at any age.

 

Don’t: Take a selfie while backing up on the edge of the canyon. I watched a German man come one backwards step away from a 5,000 foot drop into the Colorado River.

Do: Hike down into the canyon. You get an even better appreciation for its vastness when you can look up and see the red walls above you.

Don’t: Forget that it’s a lot harder to get back up than it is to get down!

Do: Encourage your kids to play “I’m thinking of an animal…” on the way up. Ours were so engrossed in the game that they forgot to complain about hiking until we were a quarter mile from the top. It’s also helpful to go with friends.

Don’t: Drive through Arizona in a dust storm. Especially if you’ve just been to the History Colorado Center and learned all about the Dust Bowl and therefor have plenty of terrifying dust death statistics to consider.

It’s impossible to really capture, but this is the view from the windshield. It was a sunny day so it should show a road and some giant rock formations ahead of us. Instead, just dust.

Do: Sign up in advance (at least three months) for the Fiery Furnace ranger-led hike at Arches National Park. (Actually, I recommend ranger-led tours at any park. We’ve done them a few times with our Girl Scout troop at Chautauqua and Wonderland Lake and it’s always great.) Fiery Furnace is restricted unless you have a pass or are signed up with the ranger, so it allows you to explore an incredible are of the park without any crowds. The girls loved “ninja hiking” across the rocks.

Don’t: Underestimate the Super 8 pool. Of course, not all Super 8s are created equal. The last one I stayed in came with an attractive blood stain on the rug. But the Super 8 in Moab is clean and quiet and has an outdoor pool and hot tub, open even in March.

Kid Soup

Do: Make sure to stop at anything that looks interesting. It’s always worth it!

Don’t: Forget to bring lots of good music and audio books for the road. Bill Bryson audio books are great for the whole family. David Sedaris is less family friendly, but so hilarious that he makes up for your kids learning a few new swears.

Happy trails!

Spring Break Road Trip 2, Day 1: It’s All About the Miniature Horses

Sing a song
Yes a travel song
when you gotta go somewhere
‘Cause the fun is getting there.
Yeah. Oh what the heck, I must confess
I love a road trip!

 – Donkey in Shrek the Musical

For spring break last year, I piled the girls into the minivan and we drove north to Mount Rushmore. When we pulled into the visitor’s center six hours later, Lucy pointed up and said, “Look, they made a mini Mount Rushmore at the entrance!” “That IS Mount Rushmore,” I said and we all stared up at the disappointingly small president heads. But even though Mount Rushmore was the destination of our road trip, when we look back, we remember the best pizza we’d ever eaten in Lusk Wyoming, the bison licking our car in Custer State Park and our eyes adjusting to pitch black in the Wind Caves. It didn’t really matter that stone George Washington was smaller than we expected.

Today we headed out for our second spring break road trip. We have a full minivan this year – Calvin, Lucy and Noni squished in the way back, Elijah and Eevee designing a dream house on iPads in the middle seats, and Monica and me taking turns driving in the front. We also have enough snacks to feed a minivan full of ravenous hyenas. This time our destination is the Grand Canyon, which I know will not be disappointing because I’ve been there and was amazed. But I forgot about all of the unexpected joys of a road trip until we encountered a few today.

Our first stop was Fairplay/South Park. This wasn’t planned, but happened as most stops do on a road trip – because someone had to pee. We took an obligatory tourist South Park photo, drank vanilla steamers at a small cafe, and then discovered the preserved historic section of the old mining town of South Park. We learned that South Park is home to the state’s largest mule race. We’ll have to come back in the summer to see it one day. For now, however, we had to keep going if we wanted to make it to Durango for dinner.

It was probably about two hours later that I saw the “Miniature Horses” sign. I mentioned it to Monica after we had already passed it. In true road trip spirit, she immediately pulled a U-Turn.  We found the sign, turned onto the dirt road, and stopped at a gate with a “Private: No Trespassing” sign hanging from it. Just as we were about to back up, a banged up truck pulled up to the other side of the fence. The man driving rolled down his window and told us to unlatch the gate and come on in. As he backed his truck up the driveway, I thought, Great, he was going to the grocery store and now he’s decided to murder us instead. Uneasy, I pushed open the gate and we continued up the dirt road. At the end of the dirt road, I knew he was going to murder us. He stopped his banged up truck in front of a banged up trailer home, surrounded by piles of junk and roaming Pitbull mixes. From somewhere to the side of the trailer, a child was screaming. I couldn’t tell if it was a happy or a scared scream, but assumed the latter. We were in the middle of nowhere. If they decide to film the next season of True Detective in Colorado instead of Louisiana, we have the perfect spot for them, I thought. I turned to Monica to tell her to put the car in reverse hit the gas pedal. Before I could, she turned and opened the door to ask if we could pet the horses. That’s when I noticed the horses. To our left, about thirty miniature horses frolicked in a small open field. Noni gasped audibly from the back. It was a dream come true – real life My Little Ponies.

A minute later, Monica had asked the man in the truck about the horses and was waving to us to get out of the car. I couldn’t have been more wrong about all of it. Instead of murdering us, the man in the truck sent his two teenage sons to help us with the horses. Our kids raced into the field. Within minutes, each of them was petting a docile miniature horse. It was magical. It was also a moment I never imagined when I planned a trip to the Grand Canyon.

Noni could have turned back home then, completely satisfied with our trip, but if we wanted to get to the Grand Canyon tomorrow, we needed to get back on the road. We said goodbye to the horses, thanked the teenage boys, and continued south.

We stopped once between the horses and Durango at a gas station. In the station, a trucker walked in, took in all the kids, and then told the cashier to order popsicles for all of them on him. Once again, I was humbled by unexpected kindness. The kids were just happy to get sugar.

 

We were about two hours from Durango when my friend Julie called. Julie, Charlie, Johnny and their dog Max, have been driving an RV around the country for the past year. They are the masters of the road trip. And it just so happens that they were heading in our direction.  We had talked about possibly meeting up if the stars aligned, but I couldn’t believe our luck. We would arrive in Durango within minutes of each other.

A few hours later, I found myself sitting at dinner with Monica, Charlie and Julie, eating corn on the cob and talking while the kids drew with chalk on the floor. We talked about the beauty of all of the unexpected events that happen when you’re out on the road.

“I think we should all try keep that spirit alive in our day-to-day lives too,” Julie said. “In your life at home, your adventure for the day might simply be meeting someone new at Vic’s when you are picking up a coffee, but it won’t happen unless you are open to it.” As I listened to her, it struck me that if I had been focusing on a map or checking my phone instead of looking out the window, I would have missed the sign for the horses. And if Monica hadn’t decided spontaneously to turn the car around, we never would have seen them. How much do we miss every day because we distract ourselves rather than experiencing each moment?

A lesson to bring home from the road trip: pay more attention to the opportunities for adventure in my day-to-day life. Because the Grand Canyon is great and all, but there’s nothing quite like stopping by the side of the road and finding yourself surrounded by miniature horses.

 

Don’t Walk So Fast

“I am going to walk around in these shoes for the rest of the evening,” Eevee announced, circling the kitchen island in her character shoes. “I don’t want to fall on stage.” She’s grown at least four inches this year and is almost as tall as I am in the black heels. The shoes themselves are too big for my feet.

She’s been practicing for a show for the past few months and she’s busy. Four hours of practice on Friday, four hours of practice on Saturday, four hours of practice on Sunday… It’s nice to sit in the kitchen and have her here too. She doesn’t complain about the hard work or the long hours. She loves it.

I watch as she walks around the kitchen island again and again. She looks like a young woman.

“Your look like a stork,” Lucy tells her.

Eevee lifts her knees higher and juts her head out. “I’m a stork!” she giggles. She sounds just like she did when she was little.

I laugh with her, but I want to say, “Don’t hurry. Take a seat and be a little girl for a while longer.” Of course it doesn’t work that way. She keeps circling in her new grown-up shoes.

And I swear she seems to grown another inch every time she passes my chair.

HURRY BY MARIE HOWE

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store

and the gas station and the green market and

Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,

as she runs along two or three steps behind me

her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?

To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,

Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—

you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking

back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,

hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

Our First Snowshoeing Adventure

When my friend Abby suggested a snowshoeing excursion, I was skeptical. My girls often have to be dragged on hikes, and snowshoeing seemed like hiking only harder…and colder. Turns out it’s both, but it’s also really fun.

We packed up the car yesterday morning with borrowed snowshoes, water bottles and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then we drove up to Brainard Lake.

In the summer, I always appreciate how close we are to the wilderness. A two minute walk from our house and we can find ourselves on a trail, hiking past coyotes and mule deer. In the winter, unless we are skiing, it’s often easy to use the cold weather as an excuse to stay indoors. Driving up to Brainard, which is another eleven miles into the mountains and wilderness once you pass Nederland, I was reminded how much I love living in this area. Then we stepped out of the car and were blasted with wind and snow and I kind of wished we were still sitting on the couch.

In the parking lot, we struggled to get our snowshoes on, covering our faces against the wind. I kept a hand on Noni to make sure she didn’t blow away. But five minutes later we were clomping through the woods. The trees blocked the wind and it was beautiful. There’s something about being out on a trail in the woods in the winter. Unlike the summer, hardly anyone is there. And then there’s a fairytale peacefulness that comes with hiking past snow-covered trees. Plus, even when you are deep in the woods with four kids, you know that all the bears are hibernating.

We spent our morning in the woods, with views through the trees of Brainard Lake and Mount Audubon. The girls said they would go again, which I consider to be the sign of a successful outing. Then of course we celebrated our morning with vanilla steamers and donuts at Buffalo Bill’s, a restored train car turned coffee shop, in Nederland.

Thank you Abby and Presley for introducing us to a new way to explore Colorado!