A CLOSE FAMILY: Durango, CO & Mesa Verde

When Cade said he wanted to do a bike race/ride again I said "Okay! Let's make it a family trip then!" It ended up being super fun. Even though when we first arrived at our Airbnb, it smelled very strongly of sewer. At least the kiddos had a pool with a fun slide to entertain themselves. It was very beautiful. I"m not a huge fan of swimming so I mostly just watched and sat in the hot tub some.

The next morning after a night of horrible sleep (Benson was sick and screamed all night long- at least Cade was two rooms away and I could allow him to get some sleep for his race), we took Cade to the start of the ride in Durango and then had to head up to Silverton before they closed the road for the rest of the day. We had ordered breakfast to go at the one breakfast place in all of Silverton. We ate sticky frech toast in our van...not an ideal picnic but it worked out.

Then we drove to Ouray while Cade was working hard on his bike. The race was called the Iron Horse Classic (the Iron horse referring to the train that is famous for traveling from Durango to Silverton and back). We drove to a pretty waterfall and hiked around some but it was a 45-50 min drive back to Silverton so we didn't know when Cade would be back.

We got back around 11:00 and parked and went towards the finish line area to cheer him on. We cheered on many many strangers while standing in a freezing cold blizzard that came out of nowhere. We had brought jackets but apparently were rookies because everyone around us had coats, scarfs, hats and gloves. We didn't get the memo. We had two blankets in the van that we wrapper around us. But still, our hands were frozen and Jane and Benson were crying. I took them back to the van and by that time some people had cleared out. I pulled the van closer to the finish line and kept them in the van with a little show while I went back to cheer him on. He came and when the older girls saw him they screamed as loud as they could and started running along side him. It was pretty cute!

We are pretty proud of how hard he worked to do it. He trained for months in his parents basement (until end of April) and then outside the rest of the time. Way to go Dad!!

We went back to the Airbnb for more swimming and hot tubbing then in the evening we went to a cute restaurant where we could pet baby goats and enjoy a pretty view. We met up with an old high school buddy of Cade's, Jo Precup who lives there in Durango.

Sunday we took it easy with church in town and then getting lunch and going to play at a park. Then we did more relaxing and swimming back at the place.

On Monday we headed out of the Airbnb earlier so we could make it to Mesa Verde for some tours around the cliff dwellings. It was SO neat. I could only get 3 tickets to see the Balcony House so I took Reese and Nora with me. Then Cliff Palace I was able to get us all in. It was really crazy to think those people lived on cliffs and amongst rocks their whole lives. It seems to be purely survival and it was neat to learn about their history a little.