Eclipse Tourism Trip to Wyoming and Colorado, August 2017

8-18-2017

It was rather last-minute, but we decided it would be fun to drive up and experience our first eclipse totality. This would be Griffin’s first trip, too! We were hesitant to go, since he wasn’t even two months old yet, but we figured we wouldn’t be around that many people. So it was settled. Off to Wyoming we would go!

Nate got home from work a bit early and we headed up I-25, stopping briefly in Las Vegas for dinner at Wendy’s, where I managed to tip a box of perfectly good chicken nuggets onto the floor. Grrr. We also quickly stopped at the first rest area thereafter so Hyla could use the potty. We tried to find a multi-cache geocache there, but too many muggles were around. One guy asked me if I lost something, and I told him it was for a scavenger hunt. He just laughed. My cue to leave! It was getting too dark to search anyway.

We made it up to the Super 8 in Trinidad before too long. It was unfortunate to not partake in dinner at Rino’s with the singing waiters, but with two kids, it seemed a bit much. Maybe next time. We settled in for the night on quite comfortable beds and had a great sleep.

8-19-2017

Got up early enough for Nate and Hyla to go down to breakfast. They kindly brought me up a pastry. I’d opted for hopping in the shower instead. We headed up toward Denver, making a stop here and there for potty breaks and whatnot. The traffic got rather crazy around Colorado Springs, unsurprisingly. We stopped at a strip mall in Castle Rock for a potty break and had to deal with horrible traffic. We decided to walk over to the Sonic and grab a quick lunch. I’d never eaten AT a Sonic before, but it was pleasant enough. They even had green chile cheeseburgers! From there, we battled our way through traffic up to the Denver metro area. We’d planned on going to the Denver Zoo today, but it was already pretty late in the day, and who knew what time it’d be once we got there, so I suggested we try something a little less time-consuming off our list. So we headed out to Golden to find the Amusement Park at Heritage Square.

We arrived around 3, finding ourselves at a curve in the road and a driveway leading up to a nondescript parking lot. The sign said we were in the right place, but it wasn’t obvious street-side. We drove on up and parked. Once we got the kids organized, we hiked over to the entrance area. Admission was free, and before long we saw a smattering of small rides all about. Our main goal was to ride the Python Pit roller coaster since it’d be a new coaster credit! Yay! We made our way to the arcade barn and Hyla and I got wristbands, excited to head out and hit the midway.

Our first stop was the Scrambler, one of Hyla’s favorite rides. I told her how it was also one of my mom’s favorites too. I tend to prefer rides that provide some height, but I love riding the Scrambler with Hyla – she just adores it. And she cuddles against me, mostly due to the ride’s forces, but it’s still a rare treat.

Next we went over to the Python Pit, a small kiddie coaster. We were settled in, second seat from the front. Nate and Griffin watched as we were sent around about 5 times, cringing each time we hit an ominous clank on the lift hill. I had visions of the train disconnecting from the track and sending us into the adjacent pond. I had escape plans in my head and everything! Luckily, we made it through safely, but Hyla wanted to ride again right away. Meanwhile, Nate decided to take Griffin for a hike up the nearby foothill and look for some geocaches. Hyla and I spent the next hour or so sampling more of the rides around the park: a Miner Mike powered coaster, the Scrambler again, the Tilt a Whirl, the flying bananas, and a carousel. Unfortunately, she was getting hot and didn’t really want to ride much else, so we bided our time looking at the games in the arcade until the other two rejoined us. She particularly enjoyed playing a spider stomping game, and we won some tickets which she used to get a purple jumping frog and a green unicorn. Overall, it was an ok time, but I think we got our fill.

Tired and somewhat cranky, Hyla really didn’t want to do much else. We still had to eat, though, so this was a great opportunity to head over to Casa Bonita for an evening of cliff diving and mediocre food. Nate and I had visited several times before we had kids and always enjoyed it, being kids at heart. Now was our first experience with the people the place was meant for!

We got there pretty early – before 5, I believe, and still had to wait in a significant line. We snaked through the themed corridors of an old mission. It took a while and was understandably boring for Hyla who decided, out of hunger (so she claimed) to take a bite out of my leg! What the heck?! I was not happy. I don’t consider her a biter, so this was a shock. I guess it broke up the monotony, anyway. Eventually we arrived at a cashier who took our orders. We snaked through some more corridors and realized we’d be picking up our own food and transporting it ourselves to the table. Between three meals and one of us holding a baby, I wasn’t sure how that would play out. Luckily, once we’d gotten our trays to the end of the tray support bars, we were met by an employee who not only took us to our seat but brought one of the trays himself. Phew!

We were seated on the second floor right next to the “stage,” as it were. After having had the mediocre enchiladas the last several times, I branched out and had the mediocre nachos, complete with “liquid cheese.” Ugh. They weren’t awful, though. Nate had a taco salad, and Hyla had the chicken fingers. Nate and I also shared a signature Casa Bonita Margarita. That was actually quite good! Every 10 minutes or so, some actors would come out and perform a scene resulting in someone plunging into the pool below. The first one involved pirates and was entertaining. Then we had a cliff diver showing off his stunt dives. Next came the gunslinger show which started out with a bang, literally. It made all of us jump a bit, and it totally freaked out Hyla. She was unhappy and frightened, so I took her away to explore the rest of the restaurant. We attempted Black Bart’s cave, but, already being on edge, the blowing air feature was enough for her to say “Nope.” Then we explored the arcade a while. We tried going back to our seats a few times, but the show kept going on and on. Eventually it was safe, and we returned to finish our meals.

Nate was almost done with his food upon our return, and Hyla wasn’t all that hungry, so shortly thereafter, he took her to do the rounds. Casa Bonita has lots of nooks and crannies to explore, so they toured the caves, checked out the magic show room, and spent some time riding the coin-op rides. When they came back, I took Hyla back to do more coin-op rides, but once that was done, she’d had enough. We were all tired, so we packed it up and hit the road for our hotel: the Best Western Denver Southwest in Lakewood.

I’d heard about the Best Western Denver Southwest a number of years ago when the website “The Oatmeal” ran a fundraiser in which, if a business donated $33,000 or more to the Tesla Museum, they would write about said business on their website. This Best Western came through, and had http://theoatmeal.com/blog/dinosaur_hotel written about them. Essentially, this Best Western decided to go from “tasting like chicken” to “tasting like pterodactyl.” I was intrigued and had to check it out.

We checked in pretty early, by our standards, and that gave us the opportunity to check out the grounds. When you first arrive, you’re greeted to a stegosaurus standing outside the lobby. It’s adjacent to an initially nondescript sandbox which, upon further inspection, is actually a dinosaur dig for the kiddos. Cool! Above the lobby’s carport, you’ll find a pterodactyl weathervane, and flags depicting prehistoric animals adorn the light posts around the property.

We got settled in the room, and relaxed a bit, taking turns walking around. I discovered each of the stairwells had a prehistoric scene, three depicting the age of reptiles, and one depicting the age of mammals. Pictures on the walls showcased drawings of dinosaurs, and the lobby was chock-full of fossils and dinosaur skulls. Super cool! Our own room even had a picture hanging of a fossil excavation site.

Another big draw of this hotel, to Hyla, especially, was the swimming pool. It was quite private, being in a courtyard surrounded by the hotel itself. A very strange shape, I believe it was initially intended to have ancient marine animals depicted on the bottom. If that was the case, I didn’t see it. I sat out with Griffin and watched Nate and Hyla enjoy themselves in the water as dusk turned into night. It was a relaxing way to end our busy day.

8-20-2017

We’d enjoyed another wonderful sleep on extremely comfortable beds – it was almost difficult to leave them. Nate and Hyla went down to breakfast while I got Griffin and myself ready to face the day. Our first order of business was the Denver Zoo. Neither of us is very keen on driving through busy cities, so we both felt a sense of dread realizing it was smack in the middle of downtown Denver. Nate was chivalrous and agreed to drive, much to my relief. We snaked our way through the city streets, as our Garmin directed, and were eventually greeted to a huge and beautiful city park that reminded me much of the one at which the St. Louis Zoo is located. I mentioned how we should do some geocaching here at some point (today would not be the day – too hard with exhausted kiddos). I bet there are some good ones to be found, though!

The parking lot was absolutely packed! I imagine a lot of eclipse-tourists had the same idea we did. We parked at the far reaches of the lot and made our way to the entry gates. We were excited to discover they had an animatronic dinosaur show going on throughout the park, so that would add even more fun to our trip. We worked our way counter-clockwise around the grounds, enjoying the sites. I was super impressed when, upon spotting a duck-billed dinosaur, Hyla exclaimed “It’s a parasaurolophus!!” I have always been into dinosaurs, and for some reason, that one never crossed my radar. But she knew it, alright! She would name all the dinosaurs we came across without error, too. When we got to the dinosaur dig sand table, she wanted to spend all day there, unearthing the bones. She imparted her knowledge on the employee working the table, impressing her, too. So cool.

Other highlights of the zoo included the coati exhibit – despite living in New Mexico, I’ve never seen one in the wild, and that is one of my must-dos. We enjoyed watching these fascinating critters as they puttered about. We also noticed a large number of Japanese beetles roaming the grounds. Hyla always wanted to catch them, so we did. I’m sure the zoo would have preferred we take them with us. Haha. Hyla rode the carousel all by herself for the first time. She didn’t want to ride one of the moving animals, instead opting for the peacock chair. I’d heard a child behind us in line say he wanted to ride it, and Hyla grumbled that she did, too, so I suggested she share the seat with him, and she did! So proud of her! I noticed that the moving animals rose higher than just about any other carousel I’ve ever seen, so that was exciting. Maybe next time she’ll try one of those.

Beyond this, there was a huge new tiger exhibit where they could watch you intently from above. Right outside that was a “human” exhibit where kids could pretend they were the zoo animals. Hyla adored that, and it was hard to pull her away from that one, too. Another impressive site was watching them move the pachyderms from habitat to habitat. I believe they interchange elephant and rhino exhibits fairly regularly, so we got to watch the rhino move between them, at rather close range. Very neat. One of my favorite exhibits, however, was the huge Tropical Discovery building showcasing all sorts of fascinating tropical animals, particularly amphibians. I could have spent all day in there. Unfortunately, strollers were prohibited, so Nate and I took turns inside. While waiting on them, I chit chatted with the security guard outside about the upcoming eclipse. She was concerned she wouldn’t get to experience much of it, since she’d be working at the time. I hope it was at least somewhat noticeable for her!

Overall, I have to say Denver had a quality zoo, well worth revisiting, even if the dinos aren’t there, though it was certainly a nice perk! We spent around 5 hours there and were all pretty exhausted (hence no geocaching).

We decided to head on over to the official Blue Moon RiNo Brewery brew pub for dinner. Our booth was set inside really interesting round pods, and we enjoyed our meal and a flight of beers. Our waiter mentioned that, since he worked there, I was the first person to pronounce the meal I ordered, chicken paillard, properly. Haha! (It’s “Pie-yard,” by the way.) It was delicious, though – seared chicken with arugula, tomato, parmesan, potato, and lemon parmesan dressing. After our meal, we did a quick tour of their brewing display before hitting the road.

We’d considered spending the evening at Lakeside Amusement Park, one of my top-five parks, known for its impressive nighttime light displays. I haven’t been there in years, and there’s always talk of it closing, which breaks my heart. It’s just such an historic and amazing site, it would be such a shame to lose. Unfortunately, it was well after 6, and the kids (ok, just Hyla) were getting tired, so we decided that’d be a trip for another time. We had a two-night reservation at a Best Western in Longmont: the closest place we could find a hotel reservation to the path of totality. So we made our way up for the night.

We’d have to get up early to beat the traffic up to the eclipse, so an early night’s sleep was in order. We watched some cartoons in our large room and eventually tried to get some sleep. It was difficult, though, due to the incredibly uncomfortable Sleep Number beds in the room. I’d never experienced such a bed. Despite our attempts to adjust the comfort level, it never got beyond feeling like a cross between a waterbed and a concrete slab, and I’m talking at the same time! After the last two nights of comfort, this was a shock to the system! Still, we managed to get some shut eye eventually.

8-21-2017

We got up around 5 am, threw on some clothes, and hit the road. We were greeted to ridiculous traffic on our drive on northbound I-25. It was Monday morning, so I suppose some of it could be attributed to rush hour traffic, but I’m sure not all of it, as we were averaging about 20 mph on the interstate! Worried we wouldn’t make it up there in time, there was talk of stopping in Cheyenne and calling it good enough, even though it wouldn’t hit full totality. Our goal had been to stop in Glendo, WY, at an airport that had opened its grounds for viewing, and at this rate, we just weren’t sure we’d make it. Luckily, things opened up somewhat once we hit Wyoming, and we found we’d have plenty of time to make it to the totality zone. About 10 or 11 miles south of Glendo, we noticed a lot of people parked down on the frontage road, alongside open fields. There were still openings, so we figured why risk it in Glendo? We exited the expressway and found a nice spot on that frontage alongside fellow eclipse viewers.

Totality was still about an hour off, so we entertained ourselves by watching the eclipse’s progress through a viewing box I’d made for Hyla as well as through the viewing glasses I’d gotten from the Socorro Public Library (since Albuquerque libraries weren’t handing them out until the day of the eclipse!). We had fun just hanging out and enjoying the anticipation. At one point, Nate said he noticed it had gotten darker, though it was so subtle I hadn’t really detected it. It was certainly cooler, though.

Eventually, just as totality was approaching, everything got significantly darker. Not like nighttime or anything, but definitely mid to late dusk. It happened so quickly! It was probably at 99% coverage at that point, and once totality hit, cheers could be heard amongst all the other viewers. Then silence. Absolute, almost eerie silence, as we all took in the scene. There were no cars, no birds, no insects…just complete quiet, as we all were lost in our awe.

Despite assurances that you can look at totality with the naked eye, it was still kind of worrisome. We all made sure to just make quick glances up during these two surreal minutes. I’d hoped we’d get some pictures of the eclipse, but, as luck would have it, the batteries on my camera died JUST as totality hit. Nathan had planned ahead, thankfully, and had spares in his pocket, which he managed to replace just in the nick of time. Phew!! He got some incredible shots, too! I do have to say that most photos you see of the eclipse are quite different than what you experience with the naked eye. Basically, it just looks like an eerie black disc with a glowing background, hovering in the sky like a UFO. It really was surreal. Totality was over before we knew it, and we hung around a bit longer, experiencing the retreating eclipse and letting some of the other people go on ahead.

Once we hit the road, we were treated to more epic traffic issues, but at least now we weren’t in any hurry. Most overpasses we went under had people waving flags and holding banners that wished us safe travels. We even saw a lone cowboy on a horse watching the traffic spectacle from a hillside. Good times. It took forever for us to get back to the Denver metro, though, and we decided to exit the interstate long before the Garmin called for it. We made our way, through significantly lighter traffic, to the Pumphouse Brewery back in Longmont. We had a decent dinner (the chicken salad sandwich was so huge it was almost inedible!) and tried their beers, too. It wasn’t bad, though not all that memorable, I guess. Then we retreated to our room, as it was getting pretty late at this point. We had a long trek planned for tomorrow, and sleep, even on those uncomfortable beds, was in order.

8-22-2017

We took our time this morning, heading over to have breakfast at the hotel’s dining area. It was actually quite decent, with hot food like bacon and eggs! I went first, since no one else was awake yet, and then Nate took Hyla. We packed up and hit the road before too long, though, not knowing if eclipse traffic would still be awful. Luckily, it wasn’t too bad! As we headed south on I-25, we agreed we wanted to at least see something along the way so we wouldn’t be stuck in the car all day. We’d tossed around the idea of seeing Capulin Volcano in northern NM, but we both agreed it was too far off the expressway to make much sense. I was relieved, too, because I’d forgotten to pack Hyla’s National Parks Passport, and forbid we see one that I can’t document! Haha! Then I suggested we visit Garden of the Gods again. It really is stunning, and it’s easily accessible. So we did just that! We found a decent parking spot and did a nice hike, seeing a mule deer at close range and taking in the beautiful red rock formations. It really was a lovely stroll – Colorado Springs is lucky to have such a great recreational site. From there, we got lunch at Colorado Mountain Brewery. We’d been there on our last visit, and while we really didn’t want to waste much time eating, kind of leaning toward getting fast food, we remembered just how good the food here was. I wound up getting a flight of their beers, which are pretty good, and getting the duck poutine again. This is seriously the epitome of comfort food. It is so good. Nate got the nachos, forgetting that’s what he got last time, and liking it just as much as he had. I think we even had the same waitress! I should have asked if she was from Indiana…lol. Anyway, it was a lovely stop, and I highly recommend it!

Before we knew it, we were back on the road, trucking it back down to Albuquerque. I noticed all the amazing sunflowers flanking the road and wished I had thought about how much they resembled eclipses DURING the eclipse! It’d have been so neat to get a picture of a bunch of sunflowers with the eclipse behind it. Next time!!

We got home just before dark, exhausted, but none the worse for wear. Our first trip with two kids had been a wonderful success! We’re chomping on the bit for our next adventure!