I thought I was antsy to be on our way the day before we left Chicago. That feeling is, in fact, negligible compared to the day before we fly to Vancouver.
But as antsy as I am to start the next leg of our journey, I have to pause to appreciate the time we've spent in Colorado. We got to enjoy small town America for the fourth of July - Felix, Zac's grandfather, was elected Grand Marshall of the Cherry Days Parade!
We had a picnic in the park, got ice cream, took long, lazy naps in the afternoon...it was quite the delightful 4th by my standards!
And have I mentioned this is the view from the living room??
We also explored Marble, CO. Zac has been going out to Marble ever since he was a little kid (oh man. The tiny-Zac pictures I got to see...SO CUTE!!). It's a marble quarry where huge chunks of raw marble lie strewn about, discarded toys dropped by giants long ago. Parts of the Lincoln Monument came from Marble! But we went to Marble on a mission. Over the course of almost 2 decades, Zac has been carving a "Z" into one of the giant chunks of marble, so we wanted to find it to refresh it...and find it we did!
Other than those little adventures, we've mainly been lounging around reading (I've already read through Barbara Kingsolver's First Flight and am almost done with Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman) and enjoying each others' company. Felix, who just turned 95, is a captivating storyteller. I don't know that I know anyone else who was born in 1918! But I enjoyed listening to stories of cross-country road trips in the late '20s or how things changed after the Depression, or his service in WWII. And he makes a mean Martini, too!
So now it's time to part ways and strike out on this crazy adventure! We finally bought return train tickets, so we'll be back in Chicago on August 15th. I can't wait to find out what happens between now and then!!
The end of that entry almost made me cry thinking about my own grandfather's stories of WWII and the great depression and his travels. So cool that you got to enjoy this time in Colorado!
ReplyDeleteIs the summer reading program called "Dig into Reading" by any chance? Cool take on the theme. We've been doing mostly underground animals and bugs.
These views are gorgeous! Keep up the photographing!