Vacation TIME!

Our first trip of the summer was supposed to be up to Yellowstone to see all the baby animals…well baby animals don’t come out of their dens when it’s still snowing.  And mommies ready for summer don’t get out coats to go on vacation.  So last minute we decided to go see Mesa Verde in Colorado instead.  I came across this interesting place last winter when I was looking for a new place to visit for Christmas break, but they were closed then.

Just a quick suggestion to anyone wanting to visit this place for more than one day – get a hotel room inside the park.  We traveled for more than 4 and a 1/2  hours just coming and going to the park three times and we were in the closest little town there is.

We stopped at our motel on our way in to the park and dropped off some suit cases and a crock pot of White Chicken Chili with Quinoa.  Most of the park closed at 6:30 so we didn’t get to see much our first night – kind of disappointing.  So on our way back we stopped at each of the pull outs to check out the view.

This was our first glimpse of the cliff dwellings: Spruce Tree House.

Neil fell asleep in between these two points.  We had advised the kids we were going to be getting in and out of the car and so for the most part everyone jumped out quickly to please mom, but as soon as the picture was over they didn’t hang around to enjoy the view but tried to be the first back to the car.  Something about the pool back at the motel seemed quite motivating to them.There were lots of pretty flowers to enjoy and even some deer jumped across the road in front of us.  Luckily we had spotted them and slowed way down.  The pink flower is a wild rose and the white flowers are yucca plants (these were everywhere).That evening when we opened the door to our room the smell was heavenly!  The kids all rushed into their swimsuits and Ken joined them in the pool and hot tub while Neil and I walked around.  The really funny part was that the only other people swimming was a family from Spanish Fork, what a small world.  We huddled around a small table to eat our soup and crackers, which was fantastic, except for needing some salt. After a little battle about who would get to sleep with who, we read scriptures and went to sleep.