Day 5

Welp, today we began our trip by packing up (Jacob and I vied for the top score on Pole Position for a while, as we were packed in 10 minutes...he finally beat mine), and heading to tour Focus on the Family.  It's pretty neat here (like an aspen tree).  We visited Whit's office, I took a picture in Eugene's face, and we visited Narnia for a few minutes.  Conveniently enough, we have enough kids to fill the four thrones.  Jennifer rode a three-story tall slide, and Jessica found the man of her dreams (that she sadly was forced to leave behind in CO Springs).  We all felt so close and connected as a family (like an aspen tree).

I think today is a dingbatty sort of day.  You can ask mom about her version of the story, but Jessica, Jacob, and I all thought that she told us to sit in the waiting room and wait while she and Dad went into the book store.  So there we sat, until Dad finally came out and asked us why we didn't want to go in.  When we told him, he said mom told him that we didn't want to come in.  We rolled our eyes and browsed around for the Siamese Tiger section (because, according to Dad, the Focus on the Family bookstore has everything.  Like aspen trees).

We made a brief stop by the Air Force Academy, to visit the pristine chapel there.  Their organ and stained glass totally blew my mind.  I kept thinking how amazing it would be to go to school at the base of the Rockies, and to play some Vivaldi along with that organ.

Each spire of the chapel represents the wings of the Air Force.  The reverence was palpable in the upper chapel, but I found it annoyingly ironic that there was a Buddhist, Jewish, and Catholic chapel in the exact same building just below the Protestant (main) chapel.  Hurray for political correctness.

From there we headed to Denver, which I had some qualms about...last time I rode through Denver I ended up on my back on the windshield of our RV.  Rather painful.

In Denver we stopped for lunch at Casa Bonita: a super unique, all you can eat Mexican restaurant (you can see how unique it is there to the right...not every day you see a super-huge, pink restaurant).  They even have a staged gun fight, a pirate sword fight, and a gorilla that runs around mockingly stealing people while you eat.  The place is enormous and doesn't seem to end, and there's a waterfall that the staff dive off of into a fourteen foot deep pool.  We found a pirate cave that winds narrowly through the edge of the restaurant, and I managed to scare Jessica three times, the first two times being within thirty seconds of each other.

I couldn't help but think that Dr Page would be proud of my "cultural experience."

The drive to Estes National Park was absolutely stunning.  The river runs wildly through the valley for most

of the way, and mountains tower around us.  Jennifer is hoping our cabin will be "nice and wildery" like the terrain around us.  I kinda do too.  ;). We saw our first elk on the way in today, and mom finally saw a prairie dog.  Or so she thinks.  It could have been a figment of her imagination.

After driving around Estes Park to pick up some groceries, we have decided that elk here are nearly as common as squirrels back home (before Jacob started shooting them).  They are EVERYWHERE.  Jacob and I went out on the deck of our cabin tonight just to spend some bro-time stargazing, and I do think that the sky here is the closest I've gotten to the beauty of the Canadian wilderness.  Stars are everywhere here.

 Tonight, I will be lulled to sleep by the distant roar of the swelled river that is a two-minute walk from our cabin.  It's surreal being out here.  I feel the rugged land coursing through me in an odd way.  I feel more alive and at home here, much like I did in Canada.  I can't wait to explore.