An Extended Stay

Justin got invited back to his internship in Colorado Springs again this summer.  We were pretty excited about it, because we thought that for sure we'd get enough notice to find a nicer apartment than where we lived last year.  We were wrong.  His internship is getting cut short this summer for some additional Army training, so he requested to have the dates of his internship adjusted, allowing him to start earlier.  It took forever to get them approved, and by the time they were actually finalized we were looking at the same kind of timeline we dealt with last summer.  I will make a long story very short, and just say that after a lot of searching we are spending the next sixty days in an extended stay hotel.  It's an interesting little adventure to say the least.  More on that later though.

We left our apartment in Utah Friday afternoon after taking way too much time searching high and low for Justin's phone, which we never found.  We decided to take it easy getting to Colorado Springs, and do some exploring on the way.  Our first day of driving was the longest, and we decided to head towards Vernal, and camp in Dinosaur National Monument.  There is a really beautiful campground there right next to the Green River.  We stopped along the way to get a picture of Devil's Slide.  I've seen pictures of it before, but I wanted to get a good look at it in person.

It looks man-made to me, but allegedly it's not

We should have stopped to take a picture of the wild horses that we saw out by Flaming Gorge, but that thought only came to me after I'd driven past them, so no pictures.  Sorry, but they were beautiful, and there was something a little bit captivating about their wildness.  We finally got to the campground that evening, and selected a site that was mercifully away from the river.  I love the river, but I love my kids more.  The night before we left Vivian and I had a little talk about staying away from it without Justin or I, and she seemed to get it, but what if she didn't?  I don't want to be on the news sobbing about my missing toddler that got swept downstream in the spring runoff.  

The view from our campsite

Justin took Vivian down to the river as soon as we got there.  Get the curiosity out of her system kind of approach.   

It's really pretty down there, and some day when the kids are older and it isn't spring runoff I want to float it.

While they were off doing that I had told Justin that I wanted to set up the tent alone, to see if I can so that I can take the kids camping while he's away at training.  I'm pretty sure that two old guys lounging around in a nearby campsite got a good laugh watching me battle it out with the rainfly, but I eventually won out.  So camping without Dad is an option this summer!

She was repeatedly asked to stop laying in the stickers.  She was covered in them.

We had dinner and called it an early night, going down with the sun.  We no longer all fit on the queen air mattress.  I can sleep on the ground, but I've done that enough with the Army, so when I camp on my own I prefer to do it comfy style with an air mattress.  Justin offered to take the ground, and weirdly Vivian insisted on joining him.  We really didn't expect her to last down there very long, but she spent the night on the ground cuddled up to her dad.  You won't ever find a bigger daddy's girl.  It's very cute.  The next morning Justin woke up in time for sunrise and snuck out of the tent early for some pictures.  

The rest of us still woke up pretty early and we had camp packed up and were at the visitor's center by 0900.  We initially wanted to do a little bit of hiking.  We drove both cars here, so I left Justin in the parking lot with both kids in his car and ran inside for a map.  While I was in line waiting for a ranger to assist me a man came through the front doors, walked up to me and asked if I was the owner of the CRV out there.  I answered that I am, and he told me that it's unlocked and that he knew that it was unlocked because he was parked next to me, forgot something in his car, turned around and opened mine on accident.  I told him that my husband is sitting in the car right next to it, and his response was "well he didn't say anything to me when I opened it."  Justin reported that he did watch the whole thing happen, and his only remark was "yeah, it was weird."  Glad he wasn't a thief I guess. 

 As it turned out the wind was kind of a problem that morning.  It was so strong that just walking through the parking lot I could hear Ivan struggling to catch his breath, so hiking was ruled out.  We settled for riding the little tram up to see the bones.  Vivian loved it.  She loved riding the "bus."  She loved touching the dinosaur bones, and well...she played with the rocks in the exhibit.  I'm pretty sure that's not something you're supposed to do in the exhibit, but she did.  She wasn't hurting anything, so the only person that said anything was her dad when he spotted her creating a mound of little rocks on the walkway.

Ivan struggling to get in his morning nap in the ergo.

The area where you're invited to touch a real dinosaur bones.  Those rocks she is standing on are the ones that got piled onto the walkway.

After that we returned to the visitor's center where I was again subjected to an odd conversation with the guy who got into my car.  He approached to tell me that the first clue he had that he was in the wrong car is that my camelback is green, and his is blue.  I would think that his first clue would have been the fact that my car was packed to the brim with stuff for the move, not that the camelback was the wrong color.  Either way, I didn't really know what to say to him about it, so the conversation went nowhere.  

We left the visitor's center and drove into the Colorado side of the monument.  There are some really nice overlooks into a pretty spectacular canyon on that side.  We've attempted to see it before, but we were turned around by the craziest lightening storm that either of us have ever seen.  I was frankly nervous about repeating the experience this time, but aside from the ridiculous wind, the weather was fine.  

Vivian and I at the second overlook.

That took up a huge chunk of our day.  We ate lunch and then set off for Eagle, Colorado where we had a hotel booked for the night.  On the way there we took a very little detour to Rifle Falls State Park.  It was beautiful.  You can tell that the area around the falls has been groomed and cleaned up a lot, but I think it's well done, and we enjoyed the break from the car. 

We drove by this reservoir on the way out to the falls.  The water color was really amazing.

There's a hike up to behind the falls

Ivan found the water to be captivating

There was also a hiking trail to the top of the falls where Justin practiced with different camera settings.

We stopped for dinner, and rolled into Eagle, Colorado just after sunset.  It was supposed to be a 3.5 hour drive from Dinosaur National Monument to Eagle.  It took us all day.  At that point we'd been in the car long enough to have driven to Colorado Springs and halfway back again.  We knew that we were pushing our luck with the kids.  We agreed that night that the next morning would be a straight shot to our extended stay hotel.  

So that's what we did.  We took our time getting out the next morning.  Maybe that wasn't a great idea.  We got stuck in traffic between Denver and the springs.  All the same, we arrived late in the afternoon, and pulled into our home for the next 60 days.  

Home Sweet Home

The dirt parking lot (not sure that's really visible in the picture), and the sign from the fifties had Justin and I feeling a little uncertain about things.  We kept kind of repeating back and forth to each other that it had great reviews online while we sat outside waiting for someone in the office to show up (they're closed on Sunday, so we had to call and wait for someone).  The office did nothing to reassure me.  When someone did arrive we were greeted into a dimly lit office that appeared to have a makeshift partition put up to block a view into a private residence.  The guy behind the counter was bundled in a winter coat (it was probably 75 degrees outside), and the maintenance man could play a convict on TV with no problem.  However, the "suite" is small, but super clean, and the maintenance man was extremely nice.  One amusing feature is that our suite is equipped with only one knife:  

I feel like a grill should be included if this is the knife that's being supplied

My suspicion is that they bought one knife set and each suite gets one knife from the set.  Lucky us, we got the meat cleaver!  Thank goodness for the kitchen section of the Dollar Tree!  Justin is outraged that their cable package does not include ESPN, but on the whole we're liking our extended stay.