Taking a few steps back, this past Christmas I gave Jonathan two, 4 day passes to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride Colorado as well as set up our room reservation in Mountain Village, a resort area just a Gondola ride away from town. There were options for camping but the thought never crossed this non-camper’s mind. Simply seeing the images of hippie crowds from festivals past had me a little concerned as to what I was signing up for.
Our trip started on this past Wednsday after we dropped Jackson off at his vacation home in Scottsdale and settled in for our 8 hour road trip. The drive to Flagstaff is quite pleasant, because it includes several transitions in cactus varieties as you climb in elevation, and reaching the pine forests provides a nice break from the desert scenery. But then came a good 4 hours, best described with the sound of a heavy sign. From brown to beige to lighter beige, the landscape fizzeled from scattered brush to inhospitable sand. Few and far between red rock and distant canyon sightings became a highlight, and a dull one at that. For a time it appeared we were driving through ubiquitous emptiness, until we neared the four corners.
My expectation for our stop at the four corners wasn’t set too high, and I certainly wasn’t going to be detoured by the $3 a person entrance fee, even though it was a little annoying. It did cross my mind, that it wouldn’t really be the 4 corners of US states seeing that it was located on Navajo land, which is technically another country, but I digress. Enjoying time out of the car we walked about the monument and stood in line to take our turn, and our picture, standing in 4 states at once. Here we were provided a little comic relief from a man insistent on spreading the word that this wasn’t really where the states met. Every person that came within earshot, whether they wanted to be or not, was informed of this unproven “fact”. When I playfully informed him that he was crushing my dreams his daughter, in line ahead of us, joked that she had been traveling with him for the past 7 days. Lucky girl.
Back on the road we didn’t have too much farther until we were greeted by a Welcome to Colorado sign. It sounds odd, but crossing the border was like literally stepping over a dashed line on a map into a new world. No sooner had we entered Colorado were we greeted by trees, green fields, nice little homes with landscaping, and a river that hadn’t already turned to dust! As the green continued and we enjoyed driving in the day light without being fried by direct sun we both realized we finally felt like our vacation had started. It took me several photos to remember that this wasn’t the first time I’d see a forest and that there was going to be plenty more peaks, lakes and forests where we were headed.
Not having been provided any check in information, I’ll just leave the negative saga out of the post and simply compare the situation to the annoyance of being hungry while staring at food you don’t get to eat. After much rigmarole and many a phone call to a snippy attendant we got our keys, and off loaded ourselves and our luggage from the Gondola. Here is where we experienced an amazing phenomenon of being invisible. I’m not sure how we did it, but seeing that the flood of high, drunk, sun fried concert goers were walking the opposite direction of us, and never bothered to scoot to one side or another we must have pulled off our invisibility talent quite well. Yes, we were starting to become unhinged and the scent of cheap hot beer and confused resort workers wasn’t helping, but we semi painlessly managed to get dinner, drinks, then a few more drinks and settle into the start of our very first, official, vacation.
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