Colorado 2012: On the road!

It’s taken me about this long (a week) to recover from our marathon drive to and from Colorado. Seriously! I think Bridget has needed the week to recover as well, especially since she was a sick little thing on Monday. No one likes a 24-hour bug. Regardless, I’m happy to finally get some downtime to share some memories from our delightful trip. Let’s start with the drive:

We’ve tried a few different ideas for road trips since we’ve had Bridget. Thankfully, they pretty much all “work” with her because she’s pretty laid back. Also, it all depends on her age at the time (big surprise). This time, we wanted to drive straight through on both the drive up and the drive back home. We decided to leave at 4:30am in the hopes that she might sleep in the car for a few hours. Eh. Didn’t really happen. But we got this cute, smiling face as entertainment so we couldn’t really complain!

She was great at busying herself with thousands of rounds of “Where’s Bridget?” and other sillinesses. The joys.

I got her the cutest “road trips are awesome” shirt and some new denim shorts, but the blasted shorts were WAY too big. I’ve got a skinny minny on my hands! I love these shots of B holding up her shorts (until we got somewhere that we could fasten a belt of some kind), Daddy pretending to do the same with his, and B making her sassy move with a smile. So cute!

 

The Donley County rest area is just about my favorite on the trip. A great bathroom, wifi, a playground, and cool stuff to look at. But beware the rattlesnakes!!

We did a pretty good job of pre-packing healthy snacks for the trip, but everyone needs an ice cream stop on a 12 hour drive. Yum!

A little later on, another road trip snack staple was requested:

 

The combination of 1/2 as much sleep as normal for my little Sleeping Beauty, no nap yet, sitting-in-one-place frustration, and car food all equaled the inevitable:

Which, in turn, becomes this:

All three of us were tickled to meet this gallant steed at our final stop before entering an hour of New Mexico wilderness. These friendly pony’s name was PENNY! And she shares the same coat color as our beloved Pen-Pen. A happy reminder of our pooch, who we already missed a lot. She was having a great time being spoiled by Mimi and Pop…she even got a trip to the doggie spa. Not a bad life. I was thrilled to get a chance to have B see a pony up close because I had big plans for her first pony ride during this trip. More to come on that!

 

A required stop at the Colorado Welcome Center in Trinidad. A GREAT place to stop for anyone traveling through the area. And the toys and kids activities are so nice!

Finally, we arrived in Colorado Springs and headed up the pass to Woodland Park. The Subaru’s first trip up the pass! A momentous occasion!

On a related note, you may have heard about the wildfires raging through the Colorado wilderness this summer. Well, my mom sent me a message today with a link to this story:

Waldo Canyon Wildfire and Evacuations

The picture I took of Jonathan driving is less than a mile from the entrance to the Waldo Canyon hiking trail, one of Colorado Springs most popular and challenging hikes. 150 acres of Waldo Canyon is now covered in flames. Minutes from my parents home! Please send your thoughts and prayers for a safe wildfire season for my family. We’ve been threatened before, but this is by far the closest and scariest.

On a lighter note, we finally made it to the house and got a GREAT night’s sleep. We all slept til 10am and enjoyed a relaxing morning at the Woodland Park Farmer’s Market…then it was time for the McCauley’s to arrive!

Here’s a silly pic of Jonathan getting his precious E85 gas once we got to our little town. His car was very happy. A happy car means a happy husband. A happy husband means a happy wife.