Last day of vacay

On our last day, I took the boys on an early hike while Ryan and the girls packed up.  (I think I got the better end of that deal!)  We then loaded up and headed towards Bishop's Castle--a destination that we had heard about and always wanted to visit, but have never wanted to make the long drive down to see.  Lucky for us, it was pretty much right on the way home.  And once again, in a BEAUTIFUL canyon!

The castle itself?  Weirdest. Place. Ever.

Back in 1969, a man named Jim Bishop decided he was going to start building himself a castle in the mountains.  By hand.  I don't really know why.  Every weekend he comes up to his castle and works on it, piece by piece.  This is what he has so far...

Before you go in, you have to sign a waiver that you won't sue if you DIE, because let's just say that Jim Bishop doesn't do things quite up to code.  And I don't think he pulled any permits to do this staircase.

If you can get past the slightly unsafe feeling you have the entire time you are on the premises, you can recognize that the castle is actually incredible--especially considering it was built by hand by one man on the weekends!

The kids kept asking me why he did it.  I just said, "This is his hobby."

Do you see the fire-breathing dragon in the background?

Lincoln and I got higher up than any of the others.  It really made all of us nervous!  There were just openings off of the balconies, no railings or anything to keep you from falling to your death.  And all the staircases were extremely steep and narrow.  Linky wanted to go higher--there were people at the tippity top, but I wasn't interested and the rest of the family was already on the ground, safe and sound, waiting for us.

The Dunes

On Tuesday morning we woke up bright and early, put our breakfast in our Camelbaks, lathered up with sunscreen and headed for the dunes.  Because the elevation is so high, it never got hot while we were there--stayed in the high 70's and low 80's, but the sand does get hot in the sun, so it is best to hike the dunes in the morning.

The sand was fun to slide down too.  And it made a really weird noise when you did it.

The kids chose the hardest route up this particular hill.

Chloe made it first!

A much needed rest--and breakfast break.

Ryan of Arabia.  (Cool pic, huh?  I'm thinking FB profile picture of the year.)

What a hike!  It took us two hours to get from our campsite to the peak.  It was by far the hardest hike I have ever done!  Parts of it were nearly vertical inclines, which is hard enough, but walking up it in soft sand is insane.  Oh my heavens!  I'll admit, there was some crawling involved.  The last part was by far the worst.  After Isaac, the girls and I finally got to the top and caught our breath, I looked down and saw Ryan standing there about halfway up, with Lincoln laying inert at his feet.  I knew there was no way Lincoln could make it--it was just so hard.  So we came back down to him.  He was devastated that he didn't make it to the top.  :(  I guess we will have to go back when he is older to try again.

Chloe and Isaac, crawling up that final, brutal hill.  I am still having nightmares.

Our view from the top.  Which gives you NO perspective of how steep that evil hill was.

We spent the rest of the day at the "river"--Ryan and I just relaxed in the sun (I read a whole novel!!! When is the last time I had time to read?!)  The kids played and played and played.  It was perfect.

And here was the perfect end to our day.

Day 2

We took our time waking up and having a nice leisurely breakfast on Monday morning.  The kids all slept in. What is up with that?  They never sleep in at home!  As we were cooking breakfast and waiting for Linky to wake up, we looked over and saw this--

No, not Chloe.  Look harder...


Lincoln got a little too close to the coals or the grill or something, but he couldn't figure out why we were all laughing at him.


After washing his face, we headed out to the Visitor's Center to see what these dunes were all about.


And then it was time to explore them!  The kids changed into their swimsuits and we were off!  I kept saying the whole time we were there that this was the strangest and most interesting place I have ever been.  We were surrounded by beautiful mountains, the air was crisp and cool and we were also playing in a river at the bottom of huge piles of sand.  Weird, but we had fun.

The view on one side

The view on the other.  The kids loved playing in the "river."

After a few hours of this, we changed and hiked to a nearby waterfall.  It was so weird to me that we could go from the sand and water to this...

Summer Vacation! Day 1

We have quite a tight schedule this summer, but we managed to squeeze in a fun family vacation in between sessions of day camp, scout camp, and other various summer programs.

When planning our trips for this year, we had thought of doing Disney and D.C., but after looking over our finances and realizing we live in one of the most incredible states in the nation, we decided to spend our summer a bit closer to home.  There is so much to see and do here!  It will probably take me more than a single blog post to get through it all...there are so many good pictures!!

We started off early Sunday morning.  After dropping Kirby off at his Country Club for the week, we headed south.  

For those of you planning long road trips of your own this summer, look at your local library for these beauties:

They are called Playaways.  They are basically little MP3 players preloaded with books on tape.  Well, not really on tape--in a digital form.  Anyway, we borrowed about 437 of them from the library and my kids were completely silent on the entire trip.  Like 12+ hours of driving without a single movie played or a single fight.  Silence.  BEST. INVENTION. EVER.

I tried very hard to make this trip not just about the destination, but also about the journey.  So our first stop was Salida, Colorado where we visited the fish hatchery.  Fish hatchery???  Seriously??  Yeah, that is what I said, too.  But the kids LOVED it!  After watching an informative video about fish in Colorado, we got to take a bucket of fish food out to the raceways and feed the fish.  As soon as the fish saw us coming, they started swarming.  It was really quite entertaining.  They were so excited to eat, they were jumping up and splashing us.  Definite fish frenzy.  We could have kept feeding those fish all day.  But we had other places to go and things to see.

On we went to St. Elmo, a real live (or dead...) ghost town.  I was unsure if this stop would be worth it, because it added quite a bit of driving time to our trip, but I am so glad we went.  First of all, it was up a canyon that had to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  We were in awe--the Aspen groves were huge and incredible.   I couldn't even begin to capture the beauty on film.

Secondly the ghost town was SO COOL!!!!  I really love old things, so this was right up my alley.  It was exactly what you would expect from a ghost town--the houses and stores were literally just deserted some 125+ years ago.  You could look in the windows and see the wallpaper they had and the pictures on the walls.  A few of the buildings had been restored but for the most part they weren't and I think that was much more interesting.  I loved it!

The final highlight of our detour into the mountains was the Squirrel/Chipmunk attraction.  Right across from the general store/gift shop was a little area where you could feed the critters.  The kids had a blast!  I think I took at least 100 pictures of it.  I will spare you all of them--here is just a taste!

Lincoln did get bit twice--so we are monitoring him for signs of rabies or hantavirus.  I guess that is just a risk you have to take when feeding rodents.

And all of you Phineas and Ferb lovers KNOW what song we were all singing!!  S.I.M.P.! Squirrels in my pants!

After dragging the kids away from St. Elmo, we forged on to our final destination--Great Sand Dunes National Park.  As we got farther away from the incredibly beautiful canyon and nearer our campsite I started to get really, really worried.  The landscape just kept getting uglier and uglier.  It was looking a lot like Arizona, without the saguaro cacti.  And if you know me at all, you know how I feel about Arizona.  I thought I had signed my family up for a week of camping in hell.

We finally spotted the dunes in the distance.  See them?

And closer...

Luckily, the vegetation started getting better again and we were pleasantly surprised with our campsite in the mountains, just a short walk from the dunes.