Road Trip — Part 2!
We crammed a lot in during our last three days on the road. There’s just so much to see in this amazing country of ours. Honestly, if you’ve never taken a road trip with your children, you need to.
Our first stop was Dodge City. We’d been there before, but it’s got some really neat history. The boys got deputized by the marshal. I was bummed they took the schoolhouse out. The last time I made the boys all sit at a desk while I stood up front ‘teaching’ them.
The next day we stopped at Royal Gorge in Colorado. Whoa is all I have to say. The boys weren’t sure about going on the gondola, so we walked across the bridge first. It supposedly can hold 2 million pounds, but that doesn’t ease the nerves when you can see down to the bottom through the wood slats. After a slow trek, we made it. We watched a cool film in the theater about its history and the fire that caused a lot of damage in 2013. It was getting really hot, but the boys really wanted to go to the play yard. It was up a steep hill, and pushing a stroller with a toddler is no joke. They played, and we realized the gondola was up another steep hill. But we were already more than half way there. All the little food/drink vendors we’d seen so far were closed. There had to be something up ahead….right….WRONG! My mom and I were dying of thirst by the time we made it to the top of the hill to the gondola. And to add fuel to the fire, they had a water vending machine at the entrance to the gondola…with a big OUT OF ORDER sign. It was frustrating to say the least. Make sure to take water with you when you explore! By this time I told the boys to get over their fear of the gondola because there was no way we were walking back. We survived, and finally found a place where we all got souvenir cups full of ice and sugary goodness.
While traveling, we eat the free breakfast at our hotel, snack in the car throughout the day, then try to find someplace good for dinner. We found some really great restaurants off the beaten path. One cute town that had several good restaurants right along the Arkansas River was Salida, CO. After eating, we put our feet in the river and watched as people floated by on inner tubes and boogie boards.
Our final destination was Dinosaur National Monument. It’s located in Northwest Colorado and Northeast Utah. It’s huge and amazing! We first stopped at the visitor center near the town of Dinosaur. That area of the park has a road to the canyon and trails. And when they say canyon, they mean canyon! Did I say it was amazing?! Unfortunately, the pictures don’t do it justice because of all the smoke in the air. After that, we headed to the visitor center where the quarry exhibit hall is. This is where the dinosaur bones are. About 1500 in fact! They built a building around the bones found. Most were there to look at, but they did have a few you could touch. The one the boys are touching was the femur of a Camarasaurus. We then took the road of the audio tour. We got to see some petroglyphs, put our feet in the Green River while participating in some awesome rock throwing, and see the cool formations of the mountains and rocks change at every turn. We will definitely go back!
When turning in their Junior Ranger book at Dinosaur National Monument, the boys had to recite the Junior Ranger pledge. They did such a fantastic job completing the tasks at all our stops. They earned seven altogether this trip, and Justin has them proudly displayed on his Junior Ranger vest. So, that’s a wrap on this adventure. School starts in a week and a half, and life will get busy again. We hope to fit in one more visit to Yellowstone before the winter, and maybe we’ll get in a trip to the Grand Tetons as well. 🙂