Road Trip 2010: Reunion, The Farmstead

We made it to Kansas City & checked into our hotel before heading over to Aunt Patty's big, beautiful home where everyone met for a tasty BBQ. As fun as all the side activities in a reunion are, I really just love being with my family and would have been perfectly content to spend the entire reunion hanging out at Patty's & visiting with my cousins, aunts, uncles, Grandma, etc, etc. Always so good to see everybody!

The following morning, everyone headed out to the Deanna Rose Farmstead for some farm-ish fun.

Christopher was cute feeding the chickens...immediately after I took this pic, that chicken jumped up and nipped at his fingers (they looked mighty tasty I suppose--I guess 'boy fingers' are to chickens what 'chicken fingers' are to little boys, ha!)

And we saw cows.

And fed some goats...

And rode tractors...

And went fishing...

And cousin Connor managed to catch a fish with his bare hands!

And later he caught another one with the pole (and a little help from his dad.)

My boys did not catch any fish (with their hands or poles), but ya know, that is just fine with me... I wouldn't know the first thing to do with it and have no desire to find out.

I'm not a fish person.)

And the cute newlywed couple came along...

Here are some other cuties on a bench too:

And we were amused by this longhorn.

I think all of the rest of the family left the farmstead long before we did. It was a fun little place for little guys and somewhere that I am sure I'd be visiting often if I lived in KC.

Road Trip 2010: Topeka

Day 3 of our trip took us from Estes Park, CO, to Topeka, KS, where we were visiting George's cousins.

That drive along I-70 through CO & KS has got to be the most boring drive ever. No signs, billboards, landscape features, or towns to pass the time...just miles and miles of flat, grassy land. This is how it looked in eastern CO (and truly unbelievable how abruptly the landscape changes from the tall majestic Rocky Mountains to this):

The only thing that changed as we drove into KS was these fluffy clouds in the sky!

Finally we arrived in Topeka, where George's wonderful cousins had dinner waiting for us. The boys sprawled out in sleeping bags on the floor & George & I slept in a wonderfully comfy bed...thanks, Jon & Miriam!

The next day (day 4 now) we had some time before we had to continue on to the reunion in Kansas City, so we played at this cute little waterpark/pool with Miriam & her boys, and Aaron & Tressa & their kids. They had a few great little waterslides:

Nice, huh?

And there were diving boards...Anthony was brave enough to jump from the high dive.

And then Aaron had to go too:

Then they tried some gymnastics tricks off the regular diving board.

Miraculously, Zachary & I both avoided sunburns with our pasty white skin!

Christopher did this little kiddie slide over and over and over and over and over again. And again.

Zachary & his 2nd cousin Brinley...they are just 3 weeks apart in age.

And here are Miriam's boys... Evan

and Matthew

All too soon, it was time to head to Kansas City...so off we went, and then we got stuck in traffic, on a bridge. Ever since that bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, it makes me nervous to sit in traffic on bridges! We sat without moving for quite a while before finally we heard sirens and these vehicles squeezed past us:

When we saw the cause of the traffic, it was really sad...I still hope the driver of the truck hauling these horses was ok--it was one of my worst nightmares: the truck had obviously been following too closely and plowed into the back of a flat trailer on a semi, causing the end of the trailer to go INTO the cab of the truck. Looked like it avoided the driver side but if there was a passenger in there, I don't see how he could have survived. Hopefully all those horses were ok too. That was quite the mess there to clean up.

Finally we got past that awfulness and made it to our fabulous destination in Kansas City for the big family reunion!

Road Trip 2010: Estes Park

We spent that night after Rocky Mountain in the little resort-y town of Estes Park, CO.

This car's license plate might leave you scratching your head--it made us laugh...just a little bit of an inside joke with George's family & Bub.

And evidently, this Wisconsin-ite is a big fan of Estes Park.

We watched for license plates all throughout our trip--we spotted plates from all of the states (and DC) except Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont (and I'm not really surprised that we never saw any of those...except maybe Kentucky) and we also spotted some from 4 of Canada's provinces: Alberta, Newfoundland, Manitoba & Saskatchewan, AND we found a Mexican plate! 50 different place-plates all together!

There was a lovely little musical thing going on in the park right there in the middle of Estes Park while we were out there on the hunt for a good place to eat dinner.

Our hunting took us down by this wild, rushing river...pretty nonetheless.

And we ended up here at this little Mexican place. Our silly boys all ordered cheeseburgers and fries from the kids menu. (The whole intent in going to get Mexican was to get a break from burgers & fries!)

And then this next part...I know this may be of little entertainment value to anyone but myself...so bear with me.

So we stayed in a Rodeway Inn there in Estes Park--it was the least expensive place we could find there for our large family...and despite a pricey room, still this place was a dump. Like all the Choice Hotels we stayed in, there was a continental breakfast and of course we took full advantage of that. This breakfast/dining room looked like it hadn't been updated at all since the late 70s.

I would just like to know how many people microwaved their eggs before they felt they had to post this sign:

Now to prove my point...check this place out--wood paneling on all the walls...the blue curtains...the furniture... Look at that table & chairs, HAHAHAHA!!!

Even this high chair...yellowed plastic (or maybe it came that way, in harvest gold)

Even the artwork hanging on the walls...

Light fixtures, carpeting...

It really was like an enormous flashback to my vague memories of early childhood back in the late 70s/early 80s. So sorry to bore you with that...I was entertained though. Reminded me so much of the dining room in my own house in King City, CA, way back when I was 3 or 4 years old!

Road Trip 2010: Rocky Mountain National Park 2

Here now is the 2nd half of the 2nd day of our road trip when we were in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

After ascending great heights, we descended to a trail down in the valley ('down' is a relative term of course, it was still at great heights...these hikes started just under 10,000 feet.) On this sign, we hit Nymph, Dream & Emerald Lakes (they are all along the same long trail).

The hike to Nymph lake was short, but very pretty:

Here is lovely Nymph lake:

So then we continued onward toward Dream Lake. Trails with bridges & boardwalks are that much more fun:

Almost there...

Benno is well-trained: without any prompting, he plopped down on this rock, turned toward me and said, "Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!"

Zachary actually was looking--full family shot!

And Dream Lake:

At long last, we arrived at Emerald Lake:

Zachary was out cold in this one.

Poor little guy kept slipping in the backpack...I finally readjusted it after this, but his chubby dangling legs were so cute anyway.

We said goodbye to Emerald Lake and turned back...this is Dream Lake again on the way back.

And Nymph Lake again, with Benno posing:

If you look closely, you can see on this map where we started (at the red arrow) & the 3 little lakes we hiked to (to the left of the arrow). We went up about 500 ft while hiking.

Great hikes! Wish we had a little more time to do some of the other little hikes in the park--we wanted to do the Bear Lake hike & the Sprague Lake one too...just ran out of time and the mosquitoes were getting bad too (thankfully we all made it out of there with only a couple bites, which is a lucky feat considering none of us had any repellant on!)

We LOVED Rocky Mountain National Park & would totally go back there again. So worth the visit and amazingly beautiful!