Travel Log: 28 March 2012 - 31 March 2012

It was time to have breakfast at the best Moab breakfast joint and hit the road for the "quick" 5 hour drive to Denver. Josh had more work meetings to take care of in Denver so we scheduled to stay 3 nights in Denver at the same hotel we stayed at for the beginning of our trip. The hotel once again proved to be a perfect business location as well as a great storage setup for our bikes and gear-filled car. We filled our days in the city with work and school and Thai food, but in the afternoons the kids and I got out to experience Denver's amazing downtown skatepark. 

At the time, at 11 & 9, (yes, I accidentally called Max 10 earlier, oy, my mind!, she fails me!) our boys were definitely noobs to skateboarding. They had bought "cheap" Target skateboards with their Christmas money and, within a month, by the end of January 2012, they had each busted those boards and wheels from their constant use. Then they saved their money and bought the least expensive boards from the local skate shop just before leaving for Moab. Even though they couldn't do many tricks other than an ollie, they LOVED skateboarding and were at it constantly.

The Moab skatepark is incredibly tiny and tame (I'd guess it's 2,000 sq ft?) compared to our local skatepark (11,500 sq ft) but the Denver skatepark was huge and filled with steps and jumps and bowls and ramps (boasting 60,000 sq ft of skateable concrete!). For our boys the Denver skatepark was a huge eye opener into the skateboarding world they were entering. At the skatepark there were little kids younger than them doing amazing tricks, jumps, and flips. Each of our boys had quite the crashes over our two days at the Denver skatepark, a combination of slippery concrete and their noob status, but nothing that made them want to quit skateboarding anytime soon. If anything, it just made them want to practice all the more.

What seemed in the blink of an eye, it was time to go back home. Our time in the desert and mountains was over and it was time to drag ourselves back across Nebraska. But the welcome into our home state was filled with life. Spring had begun, the grass was green, the trees were starting to bud, our lilacs were flowering early. 

Coming home after "only" 2.5 weeks away was not as traumatic for me as when we returned from our CA adventure. Even though there were other things in our life that were spinning out of control, the act of traveling and living/working for the second time worked better than we could have hoped. Once again, after this adventure, our family was drawn closer together. This time it wasn't that we were only with ourselves, but it was that we went on a wide variety of outdoor adventures that everyone could participate in with our varying skill levels. Once we were back home, the kids were excited about biking to the skatepark or biking for fun as a family or running with Mom on trails or biking alongside while Mom ran, etc. It wasn't that we had never done those activities before as a family, only now everyone could hold their own, the combination of age and time benefited from our togetherness.

It gave us as parents hope that maybe now there wouldn't be AS MUCH feet dragging out of 2 of 3 of our kids. One can always hope. :)!

NEXT STORY...