And we are off

Friday afternoon we left from Madison, starting off our two week road trip. The first day was fairly short and uneventful. We finally pulled off at a KOA a short distance from the Nebraska boarder. We had actually discussed for quite some time if we should keep going and enjoy the beauty of Nebraska at night. However the kids kept waking up since they where not the most comfortable sleeping in their car seats for long periods of time. With that settled we setup camp about 12:30am.

The next day we decided to hit it hard and nocked out all of Nebraska! We decided to hit another KOA just outside Denver since they have wireless and showers. After freshing up the next morning we drove into Denver and did the Aquarium with the kids. They had a blast checking out all the fish, and it gave them sometime out of the car before heading into the Mountains.

The drive through the Mountains was pretty uneventful other than realizing our van has no acceleration in the mountains when it is loaded down. We made a few more stops along the way to let the kids out to play.

One of our memoriable stops was in San Juan National Forest. There was this great 9 mile stretch with a 7% grade downhill. I decided on a whim to stop on one of the switchbacks to take some pictures. As soon as I opened the door I noticed an interesting smell. Boy that smells like burnt rubber. I looked at the tires and could make out a very faint amount of smoke. Yikes, not good I thought. We decided to give the breaks a bit of a rest and headed down to hike a small water fall. Jasmine was quite enthralled with how this was the hugest waterfall she had ever seen and how we had to take a shortcut up the mountain. Realizing we should give the car sometime to cool down, we headed up the path which came out just below the waterfall. The kids where delighted to see the waterfall up close and get to do some hiking.

After our hike we headed back down and drove the rest of the way down the mountains and drove into Durango, Co around 8pm. With storms overhead we decided to give the camping a break and find a hotel instead. It took a bit of searching, guess winging it on labor day weekend was not the most thought out. Oh well it all worked out, we scored a suite at Best Western, which was nice enough to drop the price from $200 to $119. Not quite the cheap place I was looking for but on the fly I won't complain too much about having a warm suite instead of setting up a tent in the rain.

Today after we checkout of the hotel we are heading out to Mesa Verde National Park and then into Utah to camp. Keep your eyes posted on the site, I hope to add a new post every few days on our trip.