Oklahoma Stop and Colorado Adventure

We wanted to give the kids a little extra fun since our travel plans have been postponed so we decided to spend one night in the mountains on the way to visit family. Since my parents are right along the route to Colorado, we spent an evening with them to break up the drive and enjoyed quite the busy evening!

A friend of Dad's offered a chance for the kids to fit in a horseback ride!

Some time on the swings the next morning before the drive.

We enjoyed a visit to the mountains which we kicked off with a great putt putt course.

The mountain air must be good for our golf!
Lots of holes-in-one at this course!

This may be my proudest hole-in-one...through a little stream!

You can catch how excited they were for this double-decker hole!

Lorelei enjoyed a swim at the hotel pool (Makin deemed it too cold) while I grabbed us some pizza.

The next morning we headed out bright and early for Trail Ridge Road. Because of restrictions, we had to make sure we entered the national park between 6-8 AM. I actually still almost can't believe we got in! I feel like God was showing me an extra special blessing with this. We could only sign up 2 days before we could enter, which meant we were on the road. As my alarm went off at 9:01 AM on the drive, I got online on my phone to sign up, (which opened at 9 Central Time) and as I looked at the time slots they all said they were "not available." This means there were 70+ people who signed up before that minute I got on!? What in the world? After a few minutes passed I continued to click on the time slots and amazingly enough someone's session timed out and I was able to get us signed up! I was soooo thankful. (Before that Brad and I had decided we were going to enter the park before 6 AM if needed!!!)

As hard as it was to get everyone going nice and early, we really loved that there were so few people heading up the mountain with us! So nice!

We also found a great app that was a tour guide for us while we drove and it made it such a great experience as well.

Now for the pics! :)

This was probably one of the kid's favorite stops.
These little chipmunks came right up close, even though we were under strict instructions not to feed them, they still wanted to talk you into it!

Makin and I walked a bit here (you can see the trail back below him)
and this area is technically considered tundra.

The focus here is on the tall poles. (I think about 12 ft.)
They are here so that when there is snow all over the mountain,
the plows can see where they should plow to clear the trail for spring traffic. 

One of their other favorite moments: having a snowball fight in August!

Throwing some snow at the camera.

We straddled the Continental Divide.
This was pretty anti-climatic. :)

Continental Divide Location...Still fun to see the lake in the valley though.

Lunch Covid-Style along the river.
All Brad and I will remember from this moment is being on the phone dealing with a possible water leak discovered at home. It all worked out in the end but it wasn't too fun at the moment!

Venturing out into the stream.
The water was ice cold!!!

We had more time than expected so we couldn't resist giving them a chance to try out bumper boats!
Brad did this activity as a child growing up too.

The boys wrapped up with a water balloon fight!