Trip Report – Durango 2007

Date: February 2007

Duration: 4 nights

Distance covered: 1030 miles

Itinerary:

Day 1: I-70 to Silt, CO. Dinner at Wendy’s, in Edwards. Snow squall going through Glenwood canyon but good weather otherwise.

Day 2: I-70 to Palisade; US 50 to Montrose; US 550 to Ridgway; CO 62 to Placerville; CO 145 to Cortez; US 160 to Durango. Left Silt at 0900; arrived in Durango 1630. Lunch: McDonald’s in Montrose; dinner: pizza (local chain; don’t know which) in the hotel room.

Outstanding views going over Lizard Head Pass. Roads were clear.

Day 3: Drove to Mesa Verde and back. Lunch: leftover pizza. Dinner: Tequila’s, in Durango (good).

Day 4: Drove to Aztec, NM and Aztec Ruins National Monument. Lunch: Steamworks Brewery in Durango (good). Dinner: Nini’s Taqueria (local version of Chipotle/Qdoba, only not as good). Ice cream at Cold Stone.

Day 5: US 160 to Del Norte; CO 112 then US 285 to Denver. Lunch: Taco Bell/KFC in Salida. Left Durango 0800; arrived home at 1530.

New Music:

Lindsey Buckingham, Under the Skin

Firsts:

Not much for me or my wife individually; we didn’t have time or energy to take any side roads. It was the first time we’ve been over Lizard Head Pass in winter. But it was the first trip for us as a family of four. For my son it was the

• first time in a hotel
• first time out of Colorado
• first time in a national park
• first time in a swimming pool
• first time in the ancestral home of Durango (my grandfather was born there, and my grandmother grew up there).
• first sunburn :(
  

and for my daughter:

• first time in a sleeping bag
• first time in a sofa bed
• first time let loose in a McDonald’s playland.

She did fine in the McDonald’s playland, but it was pretty nerve-wracking for me seeing her climb up fifteen feet of stairs and crawl through a tunnel ten feet over my head.

Wildlife Sightings:

The usual herd of Bighorn sheep on I-70 outside of Idaho Springs. Three immature bald eagles flying around near my father-in-law’s house. At least that’s what we think they were; definitely raptors, and too big to be hawks. He and I watched them for a while, circling around and hanging out in the cottonwoods. Herd of deer going up Dallas Divide. Herd of about a dozen deer at Aztec National Monument. Two raptors at Mesa Verde, one on the ground and one in a burnt out tree in an area that had a forest fire a few years back. Would have made a cool picture, but the camera wasn’t handy. Roadkill – dead deer in the median right at the New Mexico border (welcome to the Land of Enchantment); another on I-70. Two dead skunks.

Traffic Notes:

Saw two cars pass across double-yellow lines. Almost got front-ended in Durango at an intersection, when the car in front of me suddenly went into reverse and started backing up.

Thoughts:

As noted before, this was our first trip as a family of four. It was good to get away, but this was primarily a shake-down cruise, to see what travelling with two small kids was like, and see what needed tuning before we take any longer trips. All in all, things went well. The kids held up well in the car and we enjoyed the hotel stay.

Yep, like everything else, having kids changes the equation quite a bit. Travelling has long been one of my favorite activities in life. Before kids, it meant a chance to step out of your life; to take a break from work and most daily responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, etc); to see and experience different things, and to let your imagination open up. With kids, you can still get most of that … except the part about escaping responsibility. I think right now travelling is more strenuous than just staying at home – all the childcare still has to happen, but you’re in a non-childproofed environment unfamiliar to you and the kids, and you need to be on your toes even more.

On the plus side, having kids opens up the possible rewards – you can have fun with them in a special, more relaxed setting. You get to introduce them to new situations, and share experiences with them. My kids are a bit young to take in geography and history lessons, and maybe they’ll never really care, but it’s something I’m looking forward to. My daughter’s old enough for us to teach her that travelling is fun – she got to watch movies in the car, swim in the hotel pool, and have ice cream.

It’s fun to think of the round trip in terms of watersheds: in order, we drove through the watersheds of the Platte, Colorado, Gunnison, Dolores, Animas/San Juan, Rio Grande, Arkansas, and back to the Platte.

Lessons Learned:

Given that travelling with kids takes more energy, our old pattern of staying up late doing last-minute packing, then resting up while on vacation won’t work well. Need to do a better job of packing and sleeping in advance.

Scheduling was an issue; we were tired so we slept in every day except the last. That was a good decision under the circumstances, but it did mean that we didn’t do a whole lot in the way of seeing things. Need to do a better job of balancing relaxation with tourism. On the other hand it’s always going to be tough working in travel with nap schedules and the kids’ needs.

We got burned at Mesa Verde. When we went there two years ago, you could walk down to the big ruins at Spruce Tree House on your own (there was a ranger on duty there). Now it’s by tour only, and the timing didn’t work out for us when we showed up at a random hour. Wouldn’t hurt to check park schedules in advance.

I’m getting tired of plastic shopping bags that spill out when you open the car door … maybe we should get some higher quality camping sacks to put things in. Better packing organization would help too; we spent a lot of time shuttling items between the car and hotel ... I wonder if it would work to put the last day’s set of clothes for the whole family in a separate bag (like a camping stuff sack); that way you can be mostly packed up the night before. Have to think about this some more.

Picture: view of Shiprock from Mesa Verde