Monday June 27, 2016 – Day 2 - Rocky Mt NP

Monday June 27, 2016 – Day 2 - Rocky Mt NP  We got up at 7, ate a pretty bad breakfast, and drove to Palo Duro Canyon State Park with the intention of going on a short hike (I was trying to find a fun way of working in my 35 minutes of exercise).  Apparently I’d been to Palo Duro as a very little kids but have no recollection of it.  Well they got like ½ inch of rain the day before so literally every trail in the entire park was closed.  But I’m glad we got to see the canyon.  It was really beautiful and seemed very out of place to be in Texas.  We drove around for just a bit then left and drove through Amarillo. 

Before really getting on the road, we stopped at Cadillac Ranch.  I’m not sure if I’d ever been there or not but it was cool.  There’s only about 10 cars, not as many as I was thinking, but it was cool.  I didn’t realize that everyone spray paints them so there were cans of spray paint lying around and the kids each sprayed a little something on one of the cars.  You could actually only get to one of the cars because the other nine were in a big rain puddle.  As we were walking out to the cars we kept asking the kids to guess what they were and they guessed some crazy stuff – arcade games, paint ball stations…but not cars until we got close.

After leaving Amarillo, we drove to Dalhart and had lunch, this time at Dairy Queen.  I think the kids watched Zootopia again.  Then we crossed into New Mexico and made another AWESOME stop at Mt. Capulan Volcano. 

Ryan was super pissed but I LOVED IT.  We got magnets and had the passbooks stamped after taking a picture in front of the sign even though it’s only a national monument.  Then we drove to the top.  On the way I was telling Nick that when I was there last (27 years ago?) there were these lady bugs everywhere and sure enough they were there again.  We hiked the perimeter of the crater and it magically took 35 minutes so I got my exercise out of the way.  But those lady bugs were flying around a lot along with a bunch of other insects and Grant nearly lost it – he was squealing and saying, “I don’t like this!”  The hike was great – it was steep but the weather was cool and dry and the breeze was heavenly.  I told Nick that as soon as our kids get out of the house, we have to move to a drier climate. 

We left the volcano and drove on to Colorado, and yes, the kids watched Zootopia again.  We pulled into Breckenridge around 6:30? and stopped at Windy City Pizza for a quick (and delicious) dinner.  Then I ran into the grocery store and we got to the spectacular house at 7:45.  We were the last ones here but we still got a decent room.