Vacation

Finally, time for my much anticipated and very necessary vacation to visit Mia, Murphey, and Nora McCloy in Colorado. The plan was to hang out and enjoy Boulder for a few days then head out to Moab, Utah to go camping in Arches National Park for 3 nights. Here's how it went...


While at the McCloy's house, Mia helped me overcome my fear of cooking with eggplant as we made DELICIOUS eggplant pizzas and enjoyed them with my now favorite red wine from the Riojas region in Spain.

The next day we had a wonderful girlie day getting pedicures, eating lunch at one of my favorite places in Boulder, The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, then going to a movie.


Sunday, we went for a hike up the Flat Irons at Chautauqua Park with Nora and Murphey's father. As Nora put it, the hike was "treacherous." Yes, this 2 and a half year old girl used tha word!

After shopping for and planning our camping trip, and packing the car, we had a slight set back... Mia's 18 year old cat, Phoebe, had to be taken to the emergency vet and due to her age and difficulty taking medication, we didn't want to up and leave her the next morning so we decided to push back the trip a couple of days. This let Phoebe begin the path to recovery. So instead of spending 6+ hours in the car on Monday we went to the Boulder Creek Hometown Fair.

Nora had a blast bungee jumping, and on the train, but the best part of all was her dancing along withthe hippies pausing briefly for Mia to get some food in her mouth for dinner.

Our change of plans also allowed me a chance to spend the morning with Nora while Mia and Murphey were at work. We had a great time. We painted "pet" rocks (sorry no pictures of those, my hands were covered in paint) and ate very sweet and juicy Yellow Watermelon that we had picked up at the farmers market. This gave me the chance to teach Nora one of my favorite songs from camp, The Watermelon Song:

Then on Wednesday off we left for Moab... About an hour into the trip we were having a little snack in the car and Nora choked on a piece of popcorn and vomited all over herself and the new car seat that Mia had bought her. Thank goodness she was OK. Mia and Murphey spent the next 2 hours at a visitor's center cleaning, washing, using 409, and drying Nora's car seat while she and I occupied ourselves climbing on rocks, petting the statues, exploring all the souvenirs, and watching and re-watching the 5 minute film on the history of Georgetown, Colorado. Then off again we went. Oh, the adventure doesn't stop there... Mia had gotten directions from Google maps to the "back entrance" to Arches so we could go directly to the campsite. So we followed the directions which lead us onto a gravel/dirt road with no signs. We plugged in the handy dandy GPS which told us we were actually on the roads that Google told us, but we knew we were doing something wrong. After all it is a National Park and there were no signs. At this point we are getting concerned that we are going to have to set up camp in the dark, not the best option. Finally we saw a set of headlights ahead of us. We caught up to a pickup truck with two men who informed us that we were totally off track and that there is no "back entrance" to the park. They told us how to get there and we finally made it! The campsite is about a 20 minute drive up through the beautiful red rocks along the winding road of the park. As we are driving and the sun is setting we were marveling at the sights and we see tons of small bats flying around. Too bad that we couldn't pull over and enjoy the moment, but we wanted to get set up at camp.

Here's us getting settled in for the night...














Because we pushed back our trip 2 days, we lost 2 days of our reservation of the campsite, so on Thursday morning we woke up and we were able to get a first come first serve site that was 3 times the size of our original site. We spent the morning setting up at our new place and getting a plan together for the rest of the day.

We decided that since it was mid-day heat, we would go into town for a bit and look around then go for a hike in the evening. We got back and went on the trail that was right off the campsite to see Broken Arch.

We hiked back to camp left Nora with Murphey to have fireside quesadillas while we took off to take sunset pictures.
Then back to camp for our dinner, beers and smores around the fire. Doesn't get much better than that! The next day we woke up and started at the top of the park driving, pulling off to a trailhead taking a hike, getting back in the car driving down to the next one until we got to the bottom of the park. Here are some of the pictures from our hikes.

Skyline Arch

Sand Dune Arch

Double Arch

Balanced Rock

We then headed back into town to shower and have dinner. We made it back to camp in time for one last sunset.

Mia kept trying to make me laugh in the attempt for the to get a "natural" looking candid picture... here's one of the results.

Then back to the fire and to sleep. We woke up the next day and drove back to Colorado. What a beautiful drive! Unfortunately, I felt sick for some of the drive (my vertigo snuck up on me again thanks to some salty pasta from dinner the night before), but it was beautiful none the less! We unpacked, I re-packed and then the next morning I was off heading back to VA, but not before visiting the house where Mork and Mindy was filmed.

It was a great trip! Thank you so much Mia, Murphey, and Nora for a great vacation. I miss you already and can't wait to plan my next trip out there!

***If you want to see all of my pictures from the trip just leave a comment or send me an email and I'll send you a link to my album (just know there are A LOT of pictures).