Mountain Clams

Vacation, day 2 of 4.

My wife, daughter (16), son (15) and I took a short 4-day vacation to the western slope of Colorado, from Friday to Monday. I thought I would share a couple stories from that trip.

Saturday morning, we once again hit the Village Inn. It was too early for pie this time, so we had normal breakfast-type food. We then took a quick drive to Aspen, just to say that we were there. We did a quick lap through downtown, and were pretty lucky in avoiding the stupid pedestrians and the stupid drivers trying to pull out in front of you. Oh, yeah, and the stupid girl on a bike who was standing motionless for a while, then started to cross the road right after my light turned green and my foot was on the gas.

We returned to Glenwood Springs in plenty of time to meet up with our whitewater rafting guide. After a few minutes of formalities (sign here, put this on), we got into the raft and headed down the Colorado River. This was the first time for my kids and me in a raft. I think my wife has done some rafting before in a previous life.

As we're alternating between floating lazily down the river and getting soaked as we bounced up and down on the churning water, the rafting guide is telling us various amusing stories, including some of the places he has visited. "The worst reason for going some place," he tells us, "is just to say you were there." So true. The rafting trip lasted around two hours and covered about 8 miles of the river. It's a pretty trip, but would have been better had it not been for the power lines, railroad tracks and highway that parallel the river. We'll have to look into a more secluded trip next time.

After rafting, we headed south a ways to a BBQ/steak place we noticed on our Aspen trip. My wife and I shared a really good piece of dead cow. The kids got sandwiches. After dinner, we headed to Grand Junction. We had reservations at the Holiday Inn Express. While I don't feel any smarter, it was a good place to stay. Apart from having a view of the junkyard -- I mean, automobile recycling center -- the hotel is reasonably new, and the beds were pretty nice, with two pillows per person. That should be a standard measure of a hotel - pillows per person, or PPP. I think something like that should need to be disclosed in any advertisement for a hotel, just like I think the size of the screen should need to be disclosed in any advertisement for a movie theater. Several times now, I have walked into a movie theater and immediately felt cheated because of the size of the screen. Anyway, where was I...

Oh, yeah... So I still didn't have anything to use as pajamas, so we left and went to the Target near the hotel. My son and I (both of whom forgot pajamas) got what we needed, and we wandered the attached mall. Hey, look - they have a Dairy Queen! 9,000 calories later, we left the mall with our new pajamas and a couple other essentials, like a Cat-a-pult - a hand-held device that tosses little plastic kitties.

Labels: vacation

posted by Brett @ 7:36 AM