Estes Park Trip: June 14; Day 9

We are heading home todayL We had decided last night to just wake up whenever the kids woke up. I ended up waking up around six to take a shower and start getting ready to go. Dave’s dad had come to the cabin to see us off as well. He and Dave loaded the truck while I got the boys fed and ready to go. We checked out of our cabin, took some final pictures in front of the YMCA statue and then headed out for the long drive home. We were debating breaking the trip up into two days, especially since we didn’t leave until around 7:15 Arizona time, but we decided it was more work to stay in a hotel with the kids than it was to drive the 17 hours home.

Since Dave and I have been together, we have gone on several trips. I always help drive for a portion of these trips and there have been several occasions while I was driving that we have run across extreme weather conditions. Dave, on the other hand, always has great weather when he drives. On this trip, Dave drove from Estes Park to Raton, NM before he handed the keys over to me. My leg of the trip was pretty windy, which is not uncommon for that stretch. The part that got a little hairy was when we were approaching Albuquerque. I had seen the storm clouds and had been sprinkled on a bit, but I was never expecting the storm we got. It rained so hard that I couldn’t hardly see 5 feet in front of me. We had to slow down from 80 mph to about 30 mph. Cars were even pulling off of the freeway to wait the storm out. From a safety standpoint, I probably should have done the same, but we were under a time crunch to get home. The kids tend to get a little antsy when they’ve been in the car for longer than 16 hours at a time. The craziest part is that I think Dave was actually jealous of the fact that I got to drive in the “fun stuff,” as he put it. Had I not feared that I would drown if I got out of the car, I would have traded places with him right then, but I sucked it up and kept going.

I drove until Holbrook, AZ where we ate dinner. The most drastic altitude change is on the drive into Flagstaff and back down towards Phoenix, so I gave the boys some Motrin and Benadryl to help them sleep and not have any pain in their ears from the altitude. Thankfully it worked great and they were both asleep by the time we got into Flagstaff and slept the rest of the way home. We got home around 10:30 that night. We actually made better time driving home, which was surprising given that we hit a lot of slow traffic as well as a crazy downpour along the way.

All in all, it was a great trip and we can’t wait until next year. Hopefully we won’t have as many “incidents” next year.