Month: August 2021

18-23 July: Except for two short trips to New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, we haven’t camped in Vagabond since October 2019. Two long trips that we had planned for 2020 were cancelled due to Covid. Although we appreciate being able to video chat with our daughters and granddaughters in Colorado and California, we sorely missed being able to see them in person the whole time that we were isolating at home in N.H. for more than a year. The primary goal of this year’s trip across country and back is to spend a couple of weeks with each family, with only a modest amount of hiking, biking, visiting, and sightseeing as we travel from the Denver area to Monterey and then back home.

The one place we lingered on our way out to Colorado was Indiana Dunes National Park (formerly a National Lakeshore, elevated to NP status in 2019). While the scenery seemed at first to be less impressive than most national parks, the video at the visitor center gave us an appreciation for the significant diversity of wildlife the park holds. This is especially true for birds, due to the wide variety of shore, woodland, meadow, and wetland habitats, and also to the location along the migration routes of many species that key in on the southern tip of Lake Michigan on their long journeys. We had time for a short loop hike that climbed onto a forested dune ridge with nearby views of wetlands and Lake Michigan.

In mid-afternoon of our sixth day of driving, we finally arrived at the home of our Colorado daughter Lowry, son-in-law Kyle, and their two young daughters after not having visited with them since Christmas of 2019. Corwyn, our oldest granddaughter (nearly five), had eagerly anticipated our arrival by following our progress on a map of the states until we arrived. Her younger sister Oakley (20 months old) was reserved at first, but was soon at home playing in and out of our camper while we unloaded it after setting it up in their driveway.

25-28 July:  We went with Lowry, Kyle, and the girls for a four-day/three-night camping vacation.  Chatfield is only an hour’s drive from their home and has playgrounds, paved bike paths, and a swim beach.  Early on our first morning there we awoke to the sight of the park’s colorful hot air balloon drifting close over the campground.  Later that morning Amy’s brother Bill, his son Paul, and daughter Hannah with her two young daughters came up from Colorado Springs to visit with us for a couple of hours.

In the Afternoon, “Mimi” (Amy) and Lowry drove the girls to the beach, while “Beepee” (Paul) went for a run on the bike path to meet them there.  An interesting exhibit near the path was Slocum Cabin, built by an unknown trapper around 1850 and thought to be the oldest building in the Denver area or even in all of Colorado.  The Slocum family moved into it in 1859 and owned it for multiple generations.  This small cabin (10’ x 12’) of well-crafted logs, dovetail corner joints, and a stone chimney was moved recently to its present location in the park, needing only minor repairs and a new roof and door.

The next day we hiked in Mount Falcon State Park past the ruins of a mansion built starting in 1909 on top of a high ridge southwest of Denver by John Brisben Walker, a prominent businessman and entrepreneur.  (A short interesting summary of his diverse career is at https://morrisonhistory.org/people/john-brisben-walker/.)  His wife died in 1916, then in 1918 lightning struck the house and it burned to the ground, leaving only the stonework and foundation that remains today.

On the day we left the campground, we rode our bikes about 15 miles on the Mary Carter Greenway paved bike path along the South Platte River, stopping along the way for an elegant brunch at Lucile’s Creole Café.  Oakley and Corwyn enjoyed the ride from their Trail-a-Bike seats behind Kyle and Lowry.

29 July-8 August:  For most of this week and a half, we mainly stayed around Lowry and Kyle’s to visit and to spend time with Corwyn and Oakley.  We went outside with the girls when they played in their backyard (swings, slide, and sand box) or on their front lawn (pouring water in and out of buckets and bins).  We read stories and played with them indoors (hide and seek, trying on inherited Halloween costumes).  We went for walks and bike rides to neighborhood playgrounds with them.  One day all six of us went to the Denver zoo.  We visited with Kyle’s parents twice for dinner.  Of course a couple of weeks in the lives of a five-year-old and a 20-month-old doesn’t go by without occasional bouts of crying or yelling, but the fun times were the rule and it was a precious time for us to strengthen our bonds with these two granddaughters whom we get to visit with all too infrequently.

Corwyn is looking forward to kindergarten this year.  She is already reading pretty well and the prospect of making new friends excites her.  Although she is towed on a Trail-a-Bike for long rides, she has mastered peddling her own two-wheeler and will soon need a larger bike.  Beginning swim lessons this summer have made her much more confident and capable in pools and at beaches.

Oakley doesn’t yet speak many words, but she understands a lot, usually responding to questions by pointing or with yes or no.  She is cautious and methodical, spending a lot of time observing before trying a new skill or activity.  This was our first time to truly forge a bond with her, because we haven’t seen her in person since she was a newborn infant.  She had been rather impassive during our family video chats before this visit, but after interacting with her in person on this trip we feel we have grown to really know and love her.

 

8-10 August:  We had planned to travel in a single day to Green River, Utah, but a closure of a section of Interstate 70 near Glenwood Springs due to a mudslide resulted in limited and lengthy detour options for us that seemed too long for a comfortable day’s drive.  The happy solution was to leave Lowry’s a half day earlier and spend an evening and night with longtime friends Dick and Sonia in Granby, west of the Continental Divide.  They are often on the road this time of year with their camper, but they were at home for Sonia to recuperate from recent rotator cuff surgery.

Our next campsite was in Green River State Park, which provided a pleasant shady and grassy haven in a hot and otherwise barren part of eastern Utah.  This was our base from which to make a day trip to Goblin Valley, an hour’s drive away.  The signature feature of Goblin Valley is a concentration of hoodoos, sandstone formations created when vertical cracking and subsequent weathering form intricate rock pillars.  Most of the hoodoos in this park are concentrated in a flat valley surrounded by steeply eroded cliffs, giving the appearance of a community of gnome-like shapes towering over the visitors, who are encouraged to wander among the formations scattered across the valley floor.  The Carmel Canyon trail led us down to a dry stream bed at the lower end of the valley and then up past the iconic Three Sisters formation and up through a narrow slot canyon back to the observation deck and trailhead.  It was a very hot day, and the campground at Goblin Valley has no shade or greenery, so we were only too happy to spend a second night at Green River before continuing toward California the next day.