Onward and Upward

Sorry for the delay in updates.  We've been very busy with spotty internet service.  Most of our nights this week have consisted of hiking all day with late arrivals at hotels, too late for blog entries.  So, I go back to where I left off.  Two days in Vegas should give me some time to catch up. 

Our trip to Denver was long and late. We went straight through from Kansas City to Denver. That had not been our intention, but we couldn’t really find a good hotel before Denver. So, we decided to make it all the way there. We checked in at midnight, which was really 1:00AM for us. We were tired but happy to be there for 2 nights, a rarity on this trip. I had not known what we were going to do in Denver and whether we would even stay and do anything there. We were 3 days ahead of my rough plan, so we decided to look for something to do.

We walked around downtown, went inside the Capital building, did a couple geocaches, and walked around the 16th Street Mall. We had a nice dinner and the kids actually got to bed at a reasonable hour.

We had decided to take it easy because the guys needed haircuts.  For some reason, we are having issues with hair.  One day, I looked at Alex and realized that his hair looked a little funny.  Upon further examination, I saw that he had a spot that had been cut really short, maybe shaved.  Alex seemed genuinely confused and it looked a little like a practical joke played on him.  But, I couldn’t get him to admit doing anything to his hair.  Eventually, he did admit to using my razor in the shower on his hair.  He never told us why he did it, but it will take a while for it to grow out. 

Just a couple days later, I looked at Matthew thinking that he looked funny as well.  After interrogation, he finally admitted to cutting it with scissors in the car.  We tried to get his hair cut and fixed up, but I think she just made it worse.  Originally, it just looked like he had cut part of his hair.  Afterwards, he looked like he had a dorky haircut.  Oh well.  The next day, I caught Zack trying to cut his hair.  Really?  I guess that is what happens when the kids sit in the car for long hours.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

A picture of why we're taking this trip. 

 

The next day, we took a tour of Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos. I found this interesting and enjoyed seeing the locker rooms, media rooms, etc. We got to go down on the field, but I don’t think it was as exciting as the kids had hoped. I think they wanted to play football on the field and were disappointed.

At the stadium, they had the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.  They had a room where the kids could try on outfits of the different teams in the area.  The kids got a real kick out of this.  Maybe their future attire?

 

As we headed out of Denver, Dave had found us a mountain climb that would allow us to summit a mountain relatively easily. It was supposed to be about a mile to get to the top – strenuous but possible. It’s pretty cool to actually summit a mountain, so Dave wanted to give that to the kids. That morning it was in the 60’s in Denver. Dave was in shorts. Since the climb is so short and yet summits the mountain, it obviously starts at a relatively high altitude. The temperature was dropping as we were approaching and it might have started snowing a little bit as we got higher. When, we reached the trailhead (or what we believed to be the trailhead), it was covered in snow. Not to be set back, Dave suggested we get out the boots and coats we had in the car top carrier. So, we decided to see if we could still do it.


First step, climb a 6-foot snow wall. Even that was a challenge. We maybe should have turned around. But, Dave pushed us forward. You can see the summit in the picture.  It looks attainable, at least in the summer without the snow on the ground.  We followed the path of some cross-country skiers that we had seen exiting the path. It was pretty flat, but Matthew was struggling to keep up. We never saw any markings of a trail, and we realized that we must have continued too far. We needed to head up the mountain. So, the kids just started heading up the mountain. This put us in deeper snow. Matthew and I were lagging behind and struggling to keep up. I couldn’t even see Dave and the kids. Matthew was not liking falling in the snow, and we were ready to turn back. But, I couldn’t get Dave or the other kids to hear me. So, we continued on. I kept post-holing in the snow. We were soaked and cold. I finally could hear the other kids. Apparently, Dave had gone ahead to scout. This was the makings of a sad movie. Lost in the snow on a deserted mountain. Dave could not hear me, so we just waited. Finally, he appeared to say that we had way overshot our summit if we wanted to make a different try. I vetoed that idea and we headed back to the car. Matthew was so over this snow, and he did not want to walk. After lots of encouragement, we were able to get him back to the car. There we changed our clothes and headed back down the mountain, full of disappointment over an unsuccessful summit attempt and a frustratingly cold hike. Oh well. At least our hikes in Utah will be in the desert and not snowy. I don’t think Matthew would step foot on another snowy hike. He has been using his dry erase board to write “I hate snowy hike” over and over.


We continued back on toward Utah. The snow that we thought was just flurries from being high on the mountain turned out to be a storm coming our way. The rest of that story I shared with you earlier. Not the most fun day of the trip! Fortunately, it got much better.