North from the heat

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Today was quite an interesting (and sometimes annoying) one.

We woke up and got moving around 9, with two stops planned on our drive: one at a hot spring, one for a hike. I only got Laura moving by threatening that we wouldn't stop at the hot spring if we didn't get moving by 10:30.

Well, as it turns out, we didn't actually get out until 10:45, and I did accidentally keep my promise. It turns out, all the good hot springs on the east side of the Rockies - where we were driving - are owned by resorts. The hike-in ones are all in the center and west, several hours off our path. So alternatively, I looked for swimming holes and found 2 that were doable. Except that one was closed due to a wildfire a couple years ago, and the other's most recent reviews were all one-stars. So instead of that, I looked for lakes and found two that were listed as having swim beaches. The first, it turns out, you could only wade waist-deep (swim beach or wade beach?). The second? Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Clearly we were not destined to swim today. So we skipped the swimming and the hike and went straight on to my family's house (my dad's brother) in Centennial, a suburb of Denver.

I haven't seen this family in years, so it was wonderful to see them, even if two of the three kids are off at college. We sat around drinking beers, eating chips, and catching up (and, of course, introducing my friends) before a delicious home-cooked meal, from which we have all been starved over the past week. After dinner, us road trippers played cards and then watched Anchorman, which three of us have been quoting all trip, but Serena had yet to see. We crashed not too late, as tomorrow we have several things on our docket, including heading up north to spend some quality time at a mountain lake!

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