Greetings, gentle readers! I come to you again at last, after a 13-day trip to my homeland--Denver, Colorado. We go there most summers, mostly because: A. My parents still live there and we can crash at their place; B. All of Nathan's brothers and his sister still live in the area; and C. There's a lot of fun stuff to do in Colorado, as you will see over the next several blog posts!
Oh, and also: D. It's
Colorado in June; it
can't be as hot as Tucson, right? Unfortunately, this year, it actually was. In fact, our Fourth of July was in the high 90s, with humidity in the teens or so. By contrast, Tucson's Fourth of July 2012 was in the
low 80s and rainy!! Unbelievable. I blame our family for bringing the heat with us this year.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...
Our drive to Colorado was fairly uneventful; we stopped at our usual "halfway city," Albuquerque, and spent the night on vaguely uncomfortable beds but at least got some sleep. However, just an hour from our final destination, we were treated to a pretty scary view out our car window:
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| Yes, these pictures were taken through our bug-splattered windshield. Sorry. |
These aren't rainclouds or fog...this is smoke from a massive wildfire that was burning in Waldo Canyon, just west of Colorado Springs. Colorado is not normally a state known for its summer wildfires, but there were about eight or nine fires blazing in the state as we arrived...including the
Waldo Canyon fire, which destroyed
hundreds of homes, and forced an evacuation of 300,000 people or so. Yikes.
We were never in any danger during our drive, but it was still an unnerving experience. We stopped for a brief potty break, and just stepping out of the car we were almost blown over by hot, choking wind. The whole city smelled like a campfire and burned our lungs. We were relieved to finally arrive in the relative safety of the Denver metro area, but we were sad to see the natural beauty of our home state suffering.
On a happier note, things soon settled down when we made it to Grandma Nash's house. We had lots of fun day-trips & activities on this vacation, and I'll blog about them all over the next few days. For me (and Nathan), this vacation was a needed break from routine. We welcomed an opportunity to "get away from it all," and even though we were still keeping the girls entertained much of the time, we found lots of spare moments to read, nap, relax, attend the temple, and generally unwind in a way we haven't had all year long.
But don't think the kids were bored! They had lots of fun; and, since it was hotter than usual in Colorado this summer, we took a few (ie.,
many) opportunities to get wet:
Whether it was the Slip 'N Slide in Grandma's backyard...
...a lunch with cousins at the Cherry Creek reservoir (we didn't take the girls swimming, but they did get a bunch of sand between their toes)
...a splash pad in east Aurora...
...or a new playground/water park in south Aurora on the Fourth of July (more on this in a later post)...the girls spent much of this vacation getting refreshed.
Okay, this is a short, sweet blog post; I hope to do several of these over the next few days, as a series of small "photo albums" from our trip. I may not have much clever or witty to say; however, vacation doesn't need much explanation, does it? We went, we relaxed, we had fun, all was good! See you tomorrow.
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