Every year around our anniversary, the San Juan Mountains call to us and we must go. After the mountains that surround our small town, the San Juans are my favorite. Tall, jagged, colorful! This is a short road trip for us, four hours over some hills.
We still find ourselves adjusting to travel with a kid. Cocktail hour is not nearly as relaxing and when you find yourself in a town like Telluride, you want to splurge a little, but it turns out 16 month olds don’t understand splurging.
Sixteen months olds (or at least ours) likes constant movement… he wants the right snack at the right time… and he gets bored quickly.
Come to think of it, I share all those attributes too, but they don’t always align with a nice restaurant meal.
But this trip turned out to be one heck of a good trip. All the stars aligned or maybe we realigned to fit in with the stars.
We took the team strengths and leaned into them. Those strengths came from many road and trail miles, many lessons learned.
For example on this trip we leaned into:
A road trip is only as good as the stops along the road.
West was easy in the car this time, because we drove during nap time and made two excellent stops. The first to a strange trail exhibit in the Black Canyon and the second to an orchard where the peaches flowed freely.
Good beer leads to good people and a good place for kid chaos.
Breweries. They are the place to kick back and have some fun. No judgment. Your kid can run slightly wild plus they have beer and beer is excellent. Especially in Telluride, where you can find many excellent breweries including Smugglers, Telluride Brewing, and Stronghouse Brew Pub.
Trail snacks should be plentiful and delicious.
Do I hand West a cookie or two or three when we are on hikes? You bet I do. Hiking should be fun and cookies should be plentiful. A constant cookie drip led to 7.5 miles of fun up to glorious Blue Lake, one of about 100 “blue lakes” in this state, but possibly my favorite.
Save the snarkiness unless you are about to drive off a cliff.
I have said it before and I will say it again, I really admire my husband. The respect flows freely and as a result, we aren’t often snarky with each other. We tend to communicate fairly well, that is until we are driving up a rowdy four-wheel drive road perilously close to the edge with precious child cargo. But being a bit snippety, when you are trying to turn the car around without going over a cliff can be warranted, as long as it is constructive, always constructive.
Rivers are the best place for a romantic pizza dinner.
What is this blog, if not a celebration of the outdoors? We blow off restaurants more and more often when traveling, in order to eat outside in really pretty places. We still eat the good pizza, we just take it to places where we all can run wild.
Nap time is a really good time for champagne and reading.
It’s also a good time for adult nap time. This is all to say, when the kid naps, Greg and I party. Who says 1:00 is too early for champagne?
