Roadtrip.
In July we took a road trip to Durango and back. Did some camping, stayed at a horse farm, wandered through caverns. You were a remarkably good traveler.
DAYS 1-2: MARFA
We broke up the long drive through west Texas by spending the first night in Marfa.
We camped out in our tent at El Cosmico and had dinner at Cochineal, where you took a liking to my Rosé and got “dizzy” (your word). The next morning we had breakfast at the Buns ‘n Roses café and while we waited for our food, we wandered the space behind the restaurant where you found all sorts of broken down trucks and tractors and even an old bus. We then visited the Marfa bookstore, and left with four new books for you. We had pizza for lunch and then hit the road for Cloudcroft.
DAYS 2-3: CLOUDCROFT, LINCOLN NATIONAL PARK
We got rained on our second night of camping, though the rain let up long enough for us to cook dinner. But not the best camping experience. And the Lincoln National Park campground was pretty full. Uninspired to cook breakfast in the drizzle, we got breakfast at a diner in town and then hit the road for a long drive to Durango.
DAYS 3-6: DURANGO
Durango is where your grandparents lived before I was born, and is a place that feels like a part of my memories by association. I visited once as a kid, but don’t remember much of it. So it seemed like a good destination for our summer road trip.
Originally we were going to make it entirely a camping trip, but really I’m not that hearty a camper (hot showers and all that), so we mixed it up with some vacation rentals. In Durango I found a loft on a horse farm for us to stay at, and this was by far the highlight of the trip.
The loft was a fully equipped little house, and you even had your own room with bunk beds, which you thought was pretty neat. Returning from dinner in the evening, you talked excitedly about going back to the farm and sleeping in the “farmer’s bed.”
Beneath the loft were stables, where a horse named Bear hung out, and you got to pet him and feed him grass and carrots. The farm sat on 100 acres of pasture with the loft set a mile off from the road, so you and Diggy got to run around freely to visit with the horses as well as a pair of hounds named Pluto and Blueberry. And the mile-long driveway made for a perfect scenic running loop for me to tackle in the mornings before we headed into town.
Even more exciting for you than the horses though were the tractors and trucks and trailers. I suggested that when you got bigger you could ride a horse. But you said you didn’t want to ride a horse, you wanted to ride a tractor. I said that I would like to ride a horse, that a horse is far superior to a tractor. And from here, you worked up your plans for the future, which you repeated spontaneously throughout the rest of the trip:
“When I get big, I ride a tractor. And Mama ride a horse. And Dada ride the blue car.”
The other highlight of the Durango visit was of course getting to ride on the Durango-Silverton Narrow gauge train. You found a flyer for the train ride in the loft, and poured over it studying every train pictured. As we drove to the depot you informed us that we would be riding on a yellow train. And in fact we were. But first we took a bus ride up to Silverton (which in itself was exciting for you, right up until you passed out on my lap), and then we wandered around Silverton a bit, had some lunch, and then boarded the train for a 3-hour ride back down to Durango. We road on the open-air gondola, which ended up being a little nerve-wracking for me as you continuously tried to launch yourself over the rail in your attempt to see everything.
DAYS 6-8: SANTA FE
After Durango, we headed back towards home via Santa Fe, where we rented a room through Airbnb. You took an immediate liking to our hosts, in particular because of the play-doh and other toys they provided to keep you occupied.
Our first day in Santa Fe we started out wandering through the Plaza. It was pretty hot and crowded (and touristy) though, and you quickly tired and began requesting that we go back to the house so you could take a nap. We didn’t really want to spend the day sitting around the house while you napped though, so instead we put you in the car and went in search of a swimming hole, the closest of which was conveniently an hour drive, perfect for your nap.
So we drove out to Lake Abiquiu, which proved to be an exceptionally good place for a swim, except that we arrived just in time for a lightning storm. We didn’t get rained on, but better judgment said that we shouldn’t be in the water. So instead we explored the shoreline, following a dry riverbed a ways, and then turning around and climbing the red bluffs overlooking the lake, “broken rocks” you called them. You scrambled up the rocks really well, like a little mountain goat.
Back in Santa Fe we stopped by the rail yard district before dinner, so you could see the trains. Another highlight for you, because the Rail Runner express train looked like “Spencer” and it came and went through the station pretty frequently so you got to see lots of train action.
Some of the older, unused rails were converted into a path, which we followed to a really fun playground, equipped with climbing ropes and tunnels and spinning top-like chairs. You had so much fun playing that we couldn’t corral you for dinner, and we ended up missing out on the restaurant we wanted to go to (apparently Santa Fe closes early). And by the time we finally did coerce you to leave the park and find a restaurant still open, you were tired and didn’t want to eat.
Somehow, between all of the evening thunderstorms we experienced in Durango and New Mexico, we managed to introduce the idea that if you ate your dinner you could keep the thunderstorm away. And strangely, this myth mostly worked. After the first time, we tried it a few more times, and each time we suggested that you needed to eat a few bites of food or else we were going to get rained on, you obliged.
During the course of our trip, each night you fell asleep so exhausted that you didn’t even ask for your monkey pacifier that was packed up in your toy bag. It occurred to me that this trip would be a good opportunity to transition you finally off of the nighttime pacifier, since you clearly don’t need it any longer. But, I knew that as soon as we got back to Austin you would look for it, wanting to go back to your old patterns. So, noticing a nice plush monkey that our host had, I got an idea. And we spent the next morning on a quest to find a monkey, unbeknownst to you.
DAYS 8-9: CARLSBAD
The next leg of our journey was down to Carlsbad to see the famous caverns. We stayed the night at a KOA campground, which was nothing remarkable but by the time we got there we were pretty tired and just wanted a place to sleep. The next morning we cooked breakfast on our camp stove and then drove to the caverns. These were “awesome!” as you repeatedly commented throughout our decent. You walked nearly the entire way, which was an hour-long, mile journey.
DAYS 9-10: MARFA – CARLSBAD – AUSTIN
After the caverns, we headed back to Marfa. We had planned to camp at El Cosmico again, but the weather looked stormy so we booked a room at the Thunderbird hotel instead. This too was “awesome” you declared, mostly because the room contained a telephone. Which kept you occupied for hours (or at least, it seemed that way).
It was in Marfa however that I discovered I had lost my wallet. Which your dad seemed to think I left on the roof of the car after buying ice at the KOA in Carlsbad, and that perhaps if we went back to Carlsbad we would find it on the side of the road outside of the campground.
And so, the next morning we drove all the way back to Carlsbad, back to the KOA, searched the campsite, the driveway, and then drove slowly down the highway looking for it on the side of the road, retracing our route all the way back to the caverns. Of course we didn’t find it. And at that point we all really just wanted to go home. So after abandoning our search, we made our way back to Austin.
That last leg of the journey was pretty rough. We had effectively added another 6 hours to a 7-hour trip home. During all this long car-riding you mastered the craft of peeing in the grass. Which you did several times.
You also discovered during the journey that eating an entire bag of baby carrots gives you a stomach ache. Unable to do much to make you feel better, or to convince you that it would go away soon, I suggested that we set the timer. Lately the timer has been a great trick for setting limits on things like iPad time – you find the notion of finite time periods comforting. So I thought it might work the opposite way too. You picked the time (“five minutes” you said, holding up all five fingers) and I set the timer on my iPhone and we agreed that when the timer went off, your stomach ache would be gone. And in fact it worked. We did this a few times (sitting in the car for hours seemed to cause lots of tummy aches) and each time you got distracted and had already forgotten that your stomach hurt by the time the timer went off.
The direct route back to Austin passed through a wasteland lacking in scenic stops, decent restaurants, not even grocery stores to stop for a snack. So we ended up having to drive straight through until we got to Fredricksburg where we could get dinner. But with our backtracking and wallet-hunt we wouldn’t get to Fredricksburg until 9:30. You had stayed awake the entire journey, though as the sun started to go down you were asking to take a nap, but not in the car, you insisted – you didn’t want to nap in the car – you wanted to nap at the restaurant (as you did one night in Durango, after refusing to nap all day, you finally fell asleep in my arms at dinner). You managed to stay awake the entire trip, right up until about half and hour before we hit Fredricksburg, and then you conked out. Fortunately the restaurant had a patio, so we chose the lesser of the bad-parenting options and left you in the car with the windows open within earshot of our table and you slept right through dinner and all the way home to Austin.
The next morning you woke up chipper, as you usually do. You came into the bathroom while I was showering and asked for monkey pacifier to put on your bed. And I said I didn’t know where monkey pacifier was. And you went out, and then came in a few minutes later and said (after confirming the facts with you dad) “monkey in monkeybox, monkey pacifier all grown up into BIG monkey – real toy monkey in monkeybox!” Which translates to mean that when you opened your monkeybox looking for your monkey pacifier, you found the plush George-like monkey I’d gotten in Santa Fe nestled inside where your pacifier usually is. And when you showed Daddy, he explained that monkey pacifier grew up into a big monkey while we were away.
We weren’t sure if the story was going to stick. But it seems to have done the trick. After digesting the notion that monkey pacifier grew up into a big monkey, just like you grew up from a baby to a big boy, you stopped asking for monkey pacifier and happily carried big monkey around with you all morning, and even took him in the car with you to day care.
Black and Sun 