Day 1: Packing, travel, lunch at Casa Bonita and fun time at the hotel. Casa Bonita is a dining marvel complete with cliff divers scaling rock walls and plunging into a pool of water, gun show, dancing gorilla, lighted trees, as many soapillias as you can eat and a table flag to signal the waitress. Everyone enjoyed the food and restaurant entertainment. With our bellies full we drove to Hotel Glenwood Springs. The hotel itself was a trip highlight due to the facilities child friendly atmosphere. The hotel had a pizza parlor in the lobby and an indoor water park with zero entry pool, mini slide, spraying water mushroom, mini lazy river and and huge twisty blue water slide. If we did nothing else during our weekend, the boys would have been completely happy just swimming at the hotel. We spent hours zipping down the big blue slide each night. And I must have trekked up the stairs to slide with a boy on my lap at least 100 times. Pool time was a family affair and the boys loved Cody's torpedo and cannon ball slide. "Most fun ever" was stated multiple times about the pool and slide.
Day 2: Next up Glenwood Adventure Park. The gondola which took us to the amusement park on top of the mountain was unexpectedly in the parking lot of our hotel, PERFECT! We rode the awesome alpine slide at least 5 times. This ride was so long and so fast its hard to describe except, total fun. I could have just ridden the slide all day and been a happy camper, but there were other things to check out so explore we did. Alpine slide (my favorite) mini roller coaster, rock wall, soaring eagle zip line, giant human maze, mini cave simulation maze (Case's favorite), 4d theater, ferris wheel, giddy up ride (Cole's favorite), gondola and cave tour (Cody's favorite) were part of our hot and exhausting 9 hour day. Throughout the day we worked through plenty of whining, tears at least once and Cody and I decided we are defiantly not ready for disney yet, but we completed the day and overall it was fun and successful. The boys even ate their first funnel cake with a thumbs up rating.
Day 3: 4 hour hike to Hanging Lake. Hanging Lake hike is one of Colorado's most popular hikes. The trail is a steep mile long climb with uneven rocky terrain, but the end is a beautiful lake and waterfalls that were formed by travertine deposition where natural geologic and hydrologic processes continue to operate as they have done for thousands of years. In fact the lake and waterfall is actually a National natural landmark. Because the area is protected this is a "look only" lake so we took the additional short trail to Spouting Rock where we were able to be more interactive with different roaring waterfall. Hanging Lake was picture perfect but Spouting Rock was more exciting. Here we were able to cool off next to the refreshing waterfall spray, explore behind the falls and actually enjoy the water. We had 3 slips on the way down but only one bandaid was needed and no one was carried during the entire hike so this was considered a successful outing.
Day 4: We drove to Steamboat for a supposedly relaxing last day of just playing in the Yampa river. However Case immediately lost his bucket in the moving water and had a huge screaming crying fit. He avoided the water the rest of the time and only played in a small stagnate pool of water on the side of the river. Fun. Since Cole hates hot water we had avoided all the amazing hot springs in the area despite being in hot springs capital. But Cody noticed a spring of water spraying out of a rock across the river so I set out to explore if this was a natural hot spring. The boys followed. The smell of sulfur was overpowering to say the least and Cole ended up puking in his hands. He wouldn't wash himself off because the water was "stinky" so we had to walk across a bridge and rocks while his face, shirt and hands were covered in puke all the while he was screaming and crying. These are vacation realities folks. Just part of the memories. With that, the magic was lost and it was time to go home. Vacation over. We drove home and made it back in time to relax for a couple hours before bed. Was it a lot of work, yes. Will we do it again next year? Yes.
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