Life Is (Was?) a Vacation

tThe nice thing about moving closer to home and close to vacation spots is that people come to visit you. Egg’s mom and step-dad came down for a week. Unpacking and moving furniture sucked the life out of the first few days but by Wednesday, we were in adventure mode. On Wednesday, up the ski lift to the highest peak. The chair lift was so slow— letting on people who do not usually ski takes many a brake-lever and backwards-moving motion. It was no quad so on top of the slow-down per rider, it went trudged up the hill but the views of the peaks and the valleys and the Grand Canyon off in the distance made it worth it. At the top, we learned about a prehistoric yellow-flowered plant whose protected status meant there was no climbing down the mountain. We weren’t planning to hike down anyway because we had the Z, but the thought of the slow-speeded chair lift almost made us want to attempt it. The next day, amazing ruins. The solidness of the Pueblo architecture impressed. The layers of rock and mortar lasting 500 years—most of them without the care (or the misguided re-building, ranger-living-inside-of, re-enactments-on-top-of and kicking the modern natives out of) and help of the National Forest Service. The next day, red rocks and Z climbing high on boulders and vortices and a shared porterhouse with my step-dad-in-law, known more easily as my Rick. Then, Z’s birthday with the mountain biking, Saturday’s Prairie Dog Town Visit and last week’s adventure to Lower Lake Mary (empty), Upper Lake Mary (wide and shallow) and Marshall Lake (odd and sedge-filled with many a noisy but hidden duck).

Whilst Dr. Write and Middlebrow and son visited (starring as the most delightful visitors of all time), we went to the in-town forested park to watch Egg and Middlebrow finish up their game of disc golf. We stopped downtown for a beer and then came home to tacos and more beer and wine. The next day, we drove both of our front-wheel drive cars toward the ski resort, taking a left down a bumpy and muddy Forest Road 245 and another left on Forest Service Road 171 to the damp and dark caves. The lava was hard on the knees and the climb hard on the thighs. The tourists were too many to enjoy the experience entirely but Z and Son did a great job climbing pretty far in. The sheer number of people made the place more claustrophobic than the narrow and the dark parts. I kept imagining having to climb over people to get out. And that would be rude. But necessary. We returned home to more rain, more wine and beer, more great times.

We have one more set of visitors due this weekend but it’s already feeling like the end of vacation times. Egg went to work at a horrible job because nothing great has turned up yet. I have to go back to GR for a student scholarship thing (not so fun) and a wedding (yay!) I am working on syllabi and readings and finishing up summer writing projects. I plan to visit Z’s school this week. Do dry-cleaning. Perhaps someone else can schedule a visit so the summer isn’t really over. I could live in vacation-time all the time. I really like adventures with such fine folks all around this town.