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From Ridgway to Durango and back home again

We made it home tonight after another 2-day car drive across the country (or so it felt). And I have to give major props to the boys. They were amazing travelers. I was prepared for the worst, but they absolutely surprised me.

Most of you don't know that one of the things I want to do some day is write a series of children's travel books. Here's a preview of what a few entries would look like for kids traveling historic Route 66:
  • If you take the historic route through Santa Rosa, NM, you'll find a likeness of "Mater" from the movie Cars. Be sure to stop and get some pictures - and check out those rear-view mirrors!
  • Just West of Amarillo, look out to the south to see Cadillacs "planted" in a farm
  • Just East of Amarillo is the second largest cross in the Western Hemisphere, again on the south side of the road. It is bigger than 10 of our houses! (This was Brayden's interpretation.)
  • Just north east of Oklahoma City on the historic route is a restaurant/gift shop called "Pops." They have 500 kinds of soda pop and out front is a 66-foot pop bottle with straw.
  • Just down the road from Pops is a round barn. Bet you've never seen one like it!

There are many, many more sites and places to stop and explore on this historic route, but those are the ones the boys really enjoyed on our trip home.

The final day of vacation

On the last day of our big vacation, we drove back from Ridgway to Durango with plans to ski one last time. But after a detour through Silverton, the town that got 190 inches of snow in a matter of two weeks - that was not a typo, by the way (190 inches!!) - we arrived in Durango later than we'd planned.

If you've never seen 190 inches of snow, and I'm going to guess none of you have, it's something to behold. This little town sits down in a valley and is at least 20 degrees colder than the two major neighboring towns. Everyone seemed to have a snowmobile, and they had dump trucks hauling snow out of town. We didn't take pictures, but we should have. I doubt we'll ever see anything like that again.

Ok, so we finally got to Durango and decided there was no time to ski. So we went snow tubing. And it was a blast! My fearless boys had an absolute ball. In fact, Brayden rode by himself once and decided it didn't go fast enough by himself so chose to ride with Nate, Aunt Jenny or me to go faster. And Beau laid down on our backs and hung onto our necks kind of piggy-back style for his rides down. This is definitely something we'll have to do again. And again. And again.

We stayed at the Doubletree in Durango on Friday night. Brayden walked in the lobby with me to check in and said, "Wow. This is nice. Faaaancy." Those words coming out of a 5-year-old mouth in reference to a hotel are just funny. Maybe you had to be there.

So that's it. We're home. And we're back to work and school tomorrow. I'll try to update this more often than I had the past month or so, but we're back to the grind now, so I can't make any pinkie promises that it's going to happen.

We hope everyone had a great Christmas and happy New Year!

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