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.

Shooting some hoops

We drove across Missouri and stayed in downtown Kansas City , which is nowhere near as nice as downtown St. Louis. We got in really late and it was a little scary. But, the next day, we walked over to the College Basketball Experience. It is basically a place to do basketball activities, such as free throw challenges, 3-point challenges, dunking the ball at different heights. It was fun and gave us a chance to run around and play for a couple hours. We played a good little game of 3-on-3. It was Rachel, Zack and I against Dave, Alex, and Matthew. Alex was shooting amazingly well and heavily contributed to them beating us 20-12. It was a fun game, though. Everyone was able to get in on the action some. It won’t be long before we can have a true 3-on-3 game with everyone playing to the best of his/her ability.

Here’s Alex practicing his dunk on the smaller hoop. Dave and I took our turns on the 8-foot and 9-foot goals.

Matthew taking after his mom!

The first of many arches

Going back a few days, before the snowstorm...

We woke up to beautiful sun on Tuesday morning. We were so glad to see it because it had been so rainy. Our hotel was a short walk to the Gateway Arch, so we headed down there to check it out. We watched the movie about Lewis and Clark. I thought it would be a good introduction to the kids about where we were going and how hard it had once been to get there. Of course, the impact of that was completely lost on them.

We, despite my serious concerns, took the tram to the top of the Arch. Here we are in the tiny pods that take you to the top.


 I really hate being in places that I can’t get out of, such as elevators and tiny pods that head up a very tall and skinny arch. My biggest fear is having them stop and being stuck. Well, a short ways from the top, that is exactly what happened. We came to a complete stop. It was probably only a couple minutes, but I was having trouble remaining calm. I am a worst-case scenario person, so I start thinking that we are going to be trapped for hours. I think the kids were laughing at me.

Fortunately, we made it. The top is pretty small with tiny windows to look out over the city.

Here you can see the flooding Mississippi.

My budding model:

 I love this picture, even though the Arch is over-exposed.  At home, I'll play with it when i have better software.  I just love all the kids in it.

We walked around St. Louis, which has a beautiful downtown area, and tried to find a geocache.  We looked all around but were unsuccessful.  Zack was very upset when we had to give up. 

On to Kansas City...

Rocky Mountain High

Have you ever seen the movie, “Snowbound” where the family makes a big error by getting off the highway and gets stranded in the snow for a few days? We are experiencing our version, albeit a little more populated and hopefully way shorter and less dramatic. As we were heading out of Denver on I-70, snow began to fall. We saw a sign advising that I-70 had been shut down around Vail due to accidents. There was no forecast of reopening the road, and it had already been closed for 3 hours. They gave another route as a possibility. As we approached the exit where the road was closed, there were plenty of people waiting alongside the road for the road to reopen. Here, we made the fatal decision. We decided to take the suggested detour, which was on two state roads through the mountains. The first road of 24 miles took us up and down a mountain reaching 11,315 feet in elevation. While it was slow going, it was manageable. We saw on my phone that they had now reopened I-70, but we decided to continue on our path.

Then, we turned on the second road of 32 miles heading back toward I-70, 24 miles down the interstate. The snow really began to pick up. This was much scarier. But, we made it to 10,500 ft, the peak of the road, and thought that we were home free. But, the road was twisty as we descended the mountain. Dave spun out once, which was terribly scary for us. Fortunately, the kids hardly noticed because they were so engrossed in their video games and DVD. We began hitting traffic about 11 miles to I-70. Then, it came to a halt. We sat there for 30 minutes or so. Matthew had to pee out the side of the car. Rachel and I had to trudge through the snow to a rock to go behind. Finally, traffic began coming in the other direction. We thought that was a good sign. Ten minutes or so later, we discovered that it was just traffic turning around because a couple semis had jack-knifed ahead. We turned around to head back the way we had come. Dave could barely see out of the windshield. Ice had formed on the wipers, and it was not coming off. It looked blizzard-like at times. It was now dark. We fortunately had a car in front of us that we followed very slowly for 20 miles. I finally got cell service, and I was checking the weather. It said we were in Leadville, CO. I checked for hotels and was ecstatic to see that there were a few choices, including a Super 8. We had already decided we were camping out in the parking lot of the Shell we saw when we turned. We had jackets and a couple sleeping bags. But, it wouldn’t have been fun with these near record low temperatures.

Let me just say that Dave has on shorts because the weather was so nice in Denver, just a couple hours away. We did not know this was coming. But, I am just thankful that we had gas, food we had bought at Target, the kids were preoccupied and super good, and that we made it out of that. We still have to get over the mountains in snowstorms tomorrow, but I think there will be a break in the morning and at least in the light of day, we can see the road. Lesson of the day - never, ever get off the highway in a snowstorm!

Change of plans

My original plan had been to go to Indianapolis Children's Museum, one of the best in the country and then head to St. Louis.  Sunday night I decided to check to make sure they were open, and sure enough, they were closed on Mondays.  So, we needed to make a quick change of plans.  Abby suggested the Louisville Sluggler Museum and Factory, which was on the way to St. Louis.  This turned out to be a great, little stop off.  The tour of the factory was a short, informative 30 minute tour.  It was a good day to be there because they were making the major league pink bats that they use on Mother's Day.  We saw some of the bats for the Boston Red Sox players that we had seen at our game.  That was kind of cool, and we are planning to watch a game on Mother's Day to see those pink bats. 

We were trying to find the place, looking around at the numbers on the buildings.  Then, I pointed to the kids saying maybe it was the one with the big bat.  Hard to miss.

They had a batting cage there, which was great fun!  The kids did well hitting the ball.  I had fun!  There is nothing quite like the feel of a ball coming off the sweet spot of a bat for a good hit.  Made all of us want to play some ball!

Matthew was disappointed that he was not the 6 years old that you are required to hit in the cages.  But, they had a pipsqueak area, where he wailed on some of the balls.  The other kids wanted their turn, so I guess he didn't miss out too much.

On to a casino in St. Louis in the middle of a tornado warning.  When we got to the hotel, we turned on the TV to see that one of the biggest tornadoes on record had just hit somewhere in the St. Louis area.  So, what do we do?  We head out about 10 blocks in the rain and storms to find a good place to eat.  Alex, our concerned child, was pretty nervous that we were going to get hit by a tornado.  We actually saw the destruction as we headed out of St. Louis.  It was pretty dramatic!  Houses were destroyed, trees ripped out of the ground, road signs were crunched.  Glad it missed us!

Some brotherly love at the hotel.  I definitely have to catch moments of these.  I'll try to forget the fighting, but I think it might be etched on my brain since it happens way more often. 

Good friends

Good Friday was a long day. We definitely sacrificed that day. We had hoped to make it to Stations of the Cross, but the 2.5 hour delay getting into the US made that not possible. We made the kids wait until after 3 to eat or play video games. They were distraught by this, but it was only ½ hour after they started asking for food. Since we were fasting, we weren’t feeling too sorry for them. We drove though more rain on our way to Cincinnati. We finally made to Abby and Matt’s house around 9, I think.
I met Abby my first year at UVA. She was in my suite. We got along pretty well from the beginning and spent all 4 years there together. We lived together 3 or the 4 years and worked at the same place. She and Dave got along great, so we all hung out together a lot. Abby is one of those friends that you just know you can count on no matter how little we keep in touch. Because of her efforts to get to DC or UVA, we do get to see each other every year or two. When we began planning our trip, getting to Cincinnati was one of those must do’s. Fortunately, it worked really well that we got to go over Easter. I was glad to spend the holiday with friends rather than in a hotel somewhere. Abby and her husband, Matt, who is amazing with my kids, graciously allowed us to stay with them for 3 nights. We completely destroyed their house, seemingly did laundry non-stop, and gave their Wii more use than is reasonable. They took it all in stride, but I’m sure they were glad when we left this morning.



It rained most of the time we were there, but we were able to get to the park to see the overflowing Ohio River and geocache a little. We had a travel bug that wanted to stay on the Eastern US. Because it had been raining pretty much our entire trip, we had not geocached yet. So, we finally found a place for it before we got too far west. But, we had to cut our park visiting short as the rain was coming back. We ate at Skyline Chili to get a taste of Cincinnati.  It was very yummy!  Saturday evening, we decorated some eggs.  Not sure Abby and Matt were ready for the amount of mess 4 kids can make decorating 3 dozen eggs.











On Easter morning, the kids needed to find their Easter baskets. That Easter bunny gets trickier and trickier every year. Rachel’s was in a pot way up on the cabinet. She found it without too much looking, though.



 Zack actually found Alex’s because he was pouting about not finding his. He fell down on the couch and noticed something under the slipcover. He checked and realized it was Alex’s. Of course, he went to give Alex some super obvious clue that led him right to it.


Zack found his next while he was eating breakfast. It was actually hidden in plain sight right from the pot rack. There were a couple pots around it, but I noticed it right away. I was surprised the kids had missed it. But, he was getting upset that he didn't know where it was.


 Matthew’s was pretty easy, but he was too busy playing ball with one of the dogs. I thought he was going to be the kid that cried over not finding their Easter basket, but Alex gave him a clue about what room it was in. After that, he found it in one of the baskets under some magazines.




Not too bad finding. In fact, it was way better than Abby and Matt. I had hidden a basket for them in one of their laundry baskets under some laundry. It took them all day and a clue from Rachel after they sneaked her a dollar to find it.

On Easter, Abby’s parents and one of her sisters and her family came for lunch. It was fun. We had an Easter egg hunt and a piñata. The kids had a great time and got lots of candy by the end of the day. It was a great weekend. My kids had a blast and did not want to leave this morning. Abby and Matt, I cannot thank you enough for opening your house to my crazy crew. We love you and can’t wait to come back and visit.

Niagara Falls

Blogging seems to be much more difficult than I anticipated. My cell phone has internet access, but it is a pain to type on and the pictures get put on Dave’s computer. But, we are having difficulty getting internet access at our hotels. Most of them charge for it, which annoys me, or there are problems with it, which seems to be the case tonight. We are in St. Louis. Today, we got in early and walked to dinner. It is only 8:30, and the kids are in bed. Dave was heading to the casino, and I was going to blog. But, of course, the internet is not working. So, I am typing in Word and will hopefully find a WiFi in the morning to post this. We also were at Abby’s in Cincinnati for 3 days. Even though blogging would have been easy, I didn’t want to spend our time together doing it. So, therefore, nothing was done there either.

So, I need to backtrack quite a few days. On Wednesday, we had reservations for a show in Niagara at 6:15, so we needed to make good time on our trip. The weather was horrible. Dave was driving through rain and horrible winds. The car kept jerking as we caught a stiff crosswind. It made the drive more difficult. But, we made it into Canada and to the hotel with a little time to spare. We got dressed to go out and checked out the wonderful hotel. We had gotten a suite at the Embassy Suites. I had found a great deal. The room was large with a bedroom and enough beds for all of us (a luxury, for sure). It had free buffet breakfast for all of us, a pool, views of the falls, an arcade. We were very pleased with the hotel.

We headed out to see this dinner show about Canada. I had read about it on the internet. The reviews said it was good and entertaining. I knew that it would be kind of cheesy, but I hoped that it would give us an overview of things Canadian. Well, the food was just OK and I thought the show was pretty bad. They sang a lot of songs and really told us nothing about Canada. They had Canadian things like hockey players and Mounties, but they didn’t tell us anything about them or do anything interesting. It was a real waste of time and money.

The tour desk guy talked us into their tour of the attractions around the Falls. I knew that the costs were steep, but he gave us an extra kid free and it seemed nice to have someone else take care of everything. I couldn’t use my phone in Canada without paying ridiculous prices, so I would have had to do everything old school – find brochures, get maps, etc. Seemed more trouble than I wanted. So, we paid for the tour. The Maid of the Mist, which is the boat tour at the bottom of the Falls was not going yet because of the ice still in the river. They substituted another attraction for that one.

We started by doing this 4-D attraction. First, it showed a cartoon of how the falls were created years ago. I actually thought that was really well done. Then, we donned ponchos and headed into a room where they rained on us, the wind blew, lights flashed like lightning, etc. Matthew and Zack were scared, but it was actually pretty poor. The idea was great, but the execution was bad.



Next, we did the Journey behind the Falls. This is an elevator that takes you down into these caves behind the falls. You can walk out to a space to get a close-up view of the falls. But, we couldn’t walk out on to the platform they have outside, so we couldn’t really appreciate the falls very well. They also had little windows that are actually behind the falls. Those were interesting but not all that great.

We had a few moments to look at the Falls from the lookout point before we headed out. The mist was heavy and the lighting poor to get a good look and/or picture of the Falls.

We ate lunch at a cheesy cafeteria and headed to our substitute attraction. This is the Whirlpool Aero Car. It is a little skyride like car that goes over the whirlpool area of the Falls. We thought when they were talking about it that we would be able to see the falls, but you cannot see them at all. It is downstream a ways. We did see the gorge and the rapids. But, I’m pretty sure that ride has not been updated or even maintained since it opened in the ‘60’s. I was pretty nervous and it was pretty cold and windy.



The rapids from our car high above.  I didn't get a picture of the whole thing for some reason.


Back on the bus to a classic Niagara site (I guess), the flower clock. It’s a clock with flowers planted on it. Apparently, you can go inside and see it working and see pictures of all the faces for the past 40 years or so. But, it was neither working nor the back door open. So, that was pretty lame.

Final stop was the butterfly conservatory. This was actually really great. We’ve been to one in Aruba and one at the Natural History Museum in DC. This was the best one we had seen. There were tons of butterflies and many different varieties. Dave had his marathon shirt on, which is a super bright shade of yellow. Not the best color to wear normally, but it really attracted the butterflies. He even gave it to Zack for awhile, so he could have them land on him.




At the hotel, we did the kids’ favorite activity – swam in the pool. They had a good time. I became convinced that Matthew will do just fine on the swim team this year. He’s been resistant to the idea, so I was afraid he would throw a fit the first few days and they would bump him down a level, but I think he will be just fine. We went to Margaritaville for dinner. Here are my pirate men. They really have good margaritas there!





We took a walk down to the path by the water. At this point, the lighting was perfect. The American Falls were really beautiful and easy to photograph. The Canadian ones had a lot of mist, but they kept throwing up a rainbow, so that was pretty. Afterwards, we had dessert at the casino food court, left Dave at the casino and headed home to bed.


The next day, Good Friday, we spent 2.5 hours trying to get through customs and back into the US. Basically, this part of the trip was a lot of money, extra time, and the best thing was seeing the Falls from the free walkway. The view from the Canadian side is definitely worth it, but that traffic was horrible. And, all the attractions are just not up to par with the price. I think it’s hard to improve upon the view of just seeing the falls from the street. They are super impressive. If I knew what I know now, I would have stayed at that hotel, just watched from the Falls from the path, and left town the day before. I think Niagara has just become too much of a tourist trap.