Hot Hot Colorado Vacation 2012 Pt. 6: Our Freaky (Final) Friday in CO

Our last Friday in Colorado was a busy one, and it had its share of chills and thrills. Some were of the "ooh, deliciously creepy" type. Others were much more immediate and frightening. But, one thing at a time...

Lunchtime for lizards!!

First, the "fun creepy" stuff. We took the kids to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as we do almost every time we're in Colorado. On this occasion, the museum had a special exhibit entitled "Lizards and Snakes." It was a celebration of our scaly brethren, and it featured a few dozen live animals. It felt more like a zoo than a museum that day!

Behold the mighty gecko and his sticky fingers! Lorelai loves geckos, because they are her school mascot!

Nathan admiring a python

The museum had a couple of gila monsters on display; here, a keeper is feeding them dead baby mice. Gross! (and awesome!)

During one kids' activity, the kids were all pretending to move along the ground like snakes (well, sort of like snakes)

WAAAAUGH! Nate's near-death encounter with a huge rubber snake

The girls didn't seem as bothered by the monstrosity. They saw it as a comfy place to rest!

Before leaving this fun exhibit, we all posed for a picture with a giant boa constrictor, so that the memory of our day with reptiles will live with us always...

We love this picture; it's pretty awesome to look like we're characters on a 50s B-movie poster! I love that everyone looks terrified except Aurora, who is loving the camera as always!

As usual, though, one exhibit wasn't enough to satisfy our museum cravings. We also went and checked out the prehistoric life exhibit...

The girls are terrified as they contemplate their physical insignificance when weighed against the mighty dinosaurs

...and the space hall/planetarium, where Celeste got her hands good and dirty doing an experiment designed to teach about water erosion.

We also did something new as a family this year: we took in an IMAX show. I went to several of these movies as a kid, and thought the kids would be impressed by the HUGE screen. They were amazed, indeed. Plus, our show was in 3D, so the girls were doubly pleased to be wearing the huge glasses. Our feature was called "To The Arctic"; it began with a snowy landscape, complete with 3D snowflakes. The girls were constantly reaching out, trying to "grab" the 3D stuff they saw and loudly talking about how awesome the movie was. So funny! (Probably not too funny for the people sitting near us, though, so we did our best to keep them quiet throughout the movie) We will probably take them to another IMAX show again sometime; it was a great way to cap off our visit to the museum this year.

Okay, now to explain the "actually terrifying" scary part of the day. Thankfully, it's a very small part! After resting up from our museum trip, we drove into the foothills to visit Nathan's sister Kelli, her husband Taryn, and their four cute little boys. Kelli and Taryn have a large house that sits on several wooded acres, and it takes our breath away every time we visit. They provided a large dinner for us, then showed off some of the improvements they've made to their home since we last visited, including this lovely wooden deck!

Nathan with our nephew Myles--he's Lorelai's age

The girls had lots of fun climbing the hills in the backyard, checking out the view, swinging on the swings by the garage, and playing with their cousins. Lorelai also borrowed her cousin Myles's bike, and was zipping around the property. However, at one point, she turned onto the driveway leading up to the house...

...and started speeding downhill. As you can see, this is a pretty long, rough, steep driveway, and Lorelai was going pretty fast. She rarely rides her bike on hills (she usually drives on our flat street), so she quickly lost control. Here's what the bottom of this hill looks like:

Nice view--but that DROP...

Kelli's driveway has two 90-degree turns as it heads up the hill towards her house. At the corner of the highest 90-degree turn is this 30-foot drop-off, which is not only directly adjacent to a busy highway, but which has some metal rebar sticking up out of the ground at the bottom. And Lorelai was speeding on a bike towards this drop-off, out of control, with nothing but a few wooden posts to break her fall.

Nathan and I both took off down the hill after her, screaming for her to crash the bike, or at least to leap off of it. Still, the whole thing felt like it was in slow motion; I realized deep inside that if something awful were to happen, I wouldn't be in time to stop it. I guess Lorelai was being watched over on that day. With just feet to spare, she managed to slow her momentum enough to tip over and "crash" the bike. She was shaking, wide-eyed, and scraped up, but luckily, that was the extent of the damage. Nathan and I were unhurt physically, but we will be having nightmares about those few scary seconds for a long time to come!

Lorelai wiped out at approximately the spot where the large white rock is sitting...too close for comfort!

Lorelai, being the resilient girl she is, didn't take too long to recover from her brush with disaster. She was kind of tense for a while, but by the end of our trip, she was climbing up that same huge hill--using a rope--with her cousin Braiden. She loved climbing the hill so much, she barely wanted to stop for dinner! I guess her inner daredevil wasn't totally quashed.

Look at that kid climb!

After that, our evening went well. We got to see most of Nathan's siblings who made it up at some point during the trip (sorry, again, that I didn't get many family pictures...I was either contemplating my child's doom, or chatting with people I don't see often. My bad!). It was a nice conclusion to our lovely Colorado vacation. I am not sure when we will next make it back...but this particular trip has given us lots of trip ideas to try for next time! I am also very grateful for my parents, Ray & Lori Nash, for letting us stay in their home for so long (and almost destroying it with our mess), and being generally awesome parents and grandparents. We're glad were able to see all of Nathan's siblings; we had fun together and enjoyed catching up. Hopefully we will see more of them later in the year. Now, it's time to start blogging about Arizona once again, and wrap up our summer!