TGIF!

Well, thank goodness we slept in Krissy and Ray's house last night. We woke up after a night of pouring rain to find that one of the windows in the RV leaks, and it leaks quite a bit. The entire left side of the dinette bench was soaked. Water had leaked in, soaked the seat and even the storage space underneath was very wet. We were lucky it wasn't our bed that night.

The kids and I had a 9am tour reservation at the Denver Mint, so Krissy lent us her car, and off we went, leaving the puddle of water behind.

The Mint was great. We were amazed to learn that at the Denver Mint produces about 2 1/2 million dollars in coins a day! And, the state quarter collection was the most popular collection ever. It was raining as we left the tour, so we ran back to the car and headed back to Krissy's.

I was glad to have a rainy day schedule. It provided just the opportunity to catch up on school. We brought out the books and did some catch up. I was also able to get the RV into a repair shop. Not only is Steve, the nice RV man, fixing my propane problem, but he's also fixing my leak, taking care of my fuel hoses, and changing a number of my fluids. We'll be back on the road (safely) on Monday.

It was also the perfect day to restock the cookie dough. Made quite the batch, I may add. Kids are downstairs singing their hearts away on the karoake. We may just stay in Denver, skip the rest of our trip and super impose pictures on the blog. That was Krissy's idea.

Raining in Denver

We had a great time in Vail yesterday. I tried to coax the kids to do a hike on the mountain, but they wanted to shop. How surprising! We did get our bikes off the RV and rode around town which was fun. On our way out from Vail, we stopped at the Betty Ford Alpine Garden. It was absoultely beautiful. Mom, you would have loved it, and it also made me think of Toni. At 8000 feet, the garden has the highest collection of alpine flowers. There's even a little meditation garden--I tried to get zen there. Next to the garden was the greatest play stucture, even better than the one at Legoland. It was time for motor skill development class.

We loaded up and got over Vail pass just as some rain began to fall. We made one stop in Silverthorne to see an old friend of mine, Jillian, and her husband. Jillian came to the Denver hospital when Jack was born, so it was quite shocking to see how big he is now!

Pulling the RV into the Pittman's driveway in Denver, one would have thought we'd received free passes to Disneyland. The kids were beyond excited to see our dear friends, Ray, Krissy, Lizzie, Jacqui and Tres.

This morning we are going on the Denver Mint Tour which has had great reviews. The kids are all sleeping (in the house!), and it's a little rainy out, which I love. Mike comes tomorrow!!

Leaving UT, arriving CO

On our way out from Moab, we stopped at Utah State Park, Dead Horse Pt. Mike's brother, Dave, suggested we go there, and it was well worth the time. It was an amazing outlook. Legend has it a group of old cowboys coraled a heard of horsed out to this small, precarious point. Then they selected the horses they wanted, blocked the remaining horses out on this point (the narrow pass is only 30 yards wide, 2000 feet down), and left. The horses left behind died of thirst, starring down at the Colorado River, 2000 feet below. The girls both asked, "WHY WOULD COWBOYS DO THAT??!!" Jackson just remained silent...

We made our best time yet driving to Vail. It was so nice to get here, as it is a bit of home for me. Not only did Mike and I live in Colorado, but 17 (??) years ago, Heidi and I lived in Vail. It was close to dinner when we arrived. It feels like fall here, cool and crisp, my favorite weather. Sam said it smells like Christmas trees.

The only campground in town was closed for the season... so we ended up at the Vail Holiday Inn. I tried to convince the kids to sleep in a parking lot, but turns out Vail is not at all RV friendly!!

But we're happy, clean bed, bath tub and a little time with cartoons.

Last night in Moab

From Jackson:
this trip has been a great experrience for me. But so far I htink Moab is going to be the best. I think it's the best because out of everything, there is arches, hummer tours, bike rides, hiking, and at this campground, fishing for minnows. the Grand Canyon was pretty spectacular but Moab, overall, has been more exciting.

Today we visited Arches. if you're thinking about a family trip, go there. You can climb on most of the arches and see where Indiana Jones was filmed. If you go to the movie about Arches (in the Visitor Center), you'll hear that old bank robber gangs and train thieves would hide out in Canyonlands. The hid there because the marshalls and sheriffs weren't familiar with the area. And the bank robbers knew the area so could hide really well.

The slick rock hummer tour would be any kids favorite moment on a vacation. Teh history of Moab and Arches and Canyonland is so big, it's hard to take it all in at once. The End.

From Sammy:
H,i I am Sammy, and this is our big adventure. We're going around the US and we're going to go to 16 states and 1 country. And my Mom, Gretchen, is homeschooling us for 3 months. We are going around the US in an RV. It's going to be very fun. Except the homework isn't that fun. But that's how it's going to be. My favorite state has been I think Utah. It has been the most fun. And I'll tell you all the stuff that we have been doing. It is swimming, seeing our babysitter, her name is Liana, and then we saw Hoover Dam and we saw this most great campground. The name is Portal RV. It's in Moab. Also we catched minnows and we caught a frog.
From, Sammy

Arches Nat'l Park

From Lilly:
By the pond near our campsite, there are frogs and minnows. I caught a frog in a bucket except it jumped out. The frog was brown and very small. Okay, that's all.

from RoadMom:
Besides trying to catch frogs and minnows, we did go and see Arches Nat'l Park. It was awesome and the kids were very impressed by the size of it all. We had some overcast skies and some wind which made it more exciting. We were in the park for about 4 hours, then drove into town for lunch and more shopping--they can't seem to get enough. Back in camp, we ordered Dominos, did some school work, and headed back out to catch frogs and minnows. They might be as impressive as the arches.

Moab part 2

Had some technical difficulties adding some pictures to the last post... here are a few from today.

Moab

From Sammy:
I liked the hummer tour that we went on. And I liked swimming at our new campground. My favorite thing about Moab is we got to go and see a real dinosaur footprint, and we saw petroglyphs. Those are back in the old days when indians wrote on rocks. First they burnt the rock, and I think they used rocks to make the pictures. Thank you, from Sammy ( I am five and a half).

From Lilly:
I had a bunch of fun in the hummer today. The instructor was really nice. We got to go fast and it was really fun. I learned that we were under water, that Moab was covered by the ocean. It was really cool seeing the dinosaur footprints. When we got back, we went to the the swimming hole and to the pool. I was trying to catch frogs at the pond. That's all.