Vacation - Day 2

My mom arrived at the Cherokee Inn sometime a little after 130am this morning. I know this because I spoke to her about 1am when I couldn't sleep. Also because she had to bang repeatedly on the door to the room my dad was in to wake him up. She also called him 1/2 dozen times before he finally woke up and let her in. It's not like he didn't know she was coming.

At ~4am Steve wakes up and thinks it's time to get up because the motel clock says it's 630. I lay there wondering why he keeps talking to me. Finally he asks if I'm going to take a shower. "Yes, in about 2 hours". Around 6 we wake up just in time to catch Jackson as he's falling out of bed. This is not a problem for Matthew who has opted to "camp" on the floor in a sleeping bag. None of us got a great night of sleep, but we were on the road ~7am.

We decided it was necessary to do a drive by the selenite collection location, just to check it out and make sure it really was closed. We'd formulated several theories:
1. Too wet. Location covered in water, no selenite crystals.
2. Overcollected this year and closed early for the season.
3. Bird habitat.
4. Alien space craft landing site.
But when we get there the sign says something about hazardous material. We still don't know, but we climb up the observation tower, take a look around and decide to head west.

With Grammy and her car joining us today, we have a little more room to spread out, but it's still a long day. After driving all day yesterday, Steve drove all but about 3 hours today. My hero.

We rolled into Estes Park around 630pm and made a fashionably late arrival at the rehersal dinner. We chowed down on some BBQ and are now in various stages of crashing.

Quotes of the day from Matthew:
"When you put tea in my mouth it makes me yuck."
"Let's stop here and climb that mountain."
"I don't want to go look for parrots!" (not sure where that came from)

Quote of the day from the Salt Plains brochure:" Beneath the surface, is a quagmire of quicksand." Did they really have to use "quagmire"?

Quote of the day from me (after eating a 100 calorie bag of Doritos):"These baked Doritos are almost as good as the real ones. Oh, that's because they're not baked"