We woke up to a gorgeous morning...cool temps (53 outside) and perfectly blue skies! Wow! The Big Red Truck was once again scheduled to take us on a day trip...this time to Lake City, CO, which lies about 78 miles north of us. Once again Tom and Laura picked us up at our site, and we were on the road about 10:00...AFTER John washed Tom's windshield...and the side windows (Sheeba's nose prints), and the mirrors...and probably would have washed the bumpers too but everyone was ready to leave in this lifetime...
 
Before leaving this morning we got into one of those parent conversations, and realized that we have reached a new milestone in our lives ...who knew?? In 1978, we loaded up both girls and my (Pat's) parents into a Chevrolet Suburban (BIg Bertha), hooked to my parents 31 foot Avion travel trailer and headed "west of the Pecos" on a bucket list trip of my Daddy's. We were gone 59 night and 60 days on a trip that was over 11,400 miles round trip to the west coast, picking up in caravan my Aunt Bess and Uncle Joe in Albuquerque, NM. They traveled with us for a good bit of the rest of our trip, leaving us in Denver, CO to drop back south to NM as we headed back to Knoxville. Fantastic trip (where we met our great and wonderful friends the Meadors who were and are Nashville natives at a campground in LA). This is all leading up to my point for this paragraph. At that time we were in our thirties (and were convinced we knew it all) and were pretty much large and in charge. We had in our little caravan eight people from the ages of 10 (our younger daughter Kim) to Aunt Bess who turned 75 (which we considered to be ancient at the time, and if she were still living I would be afraid still to give out her age!!) to wagon master on this trip . Today we just realized that our children have taken over the "wagon master" role, and we are now in the position of letting them take care of us a little bit...and that is OK! They are doing a very good job in their new roles. Maybe the acorn really doesn't fall far that from the tree!
 
All this being said, we had a great and fun trip to Lake City today. The views were every bit as big as we remembered, and we had a fun time traveling with our children and sharing this day. We stopped along the road to Lake City to see a waterfall that we didn't know was there (the children knew about it and took us to see it), and then onward towards Lake City. When we got there we parked The Big Red Truck and took a walk around town, looking into several of the stores on our way. For lunch we stopped into a local cafe for a really tasty lunch. John and I split a Philly and I think it was one of the better ones we have ever had.
 
I will have to confess that Tom and I had a conversation regarding the slightly over the top cups of coffee that we had imbibed yesterday, and decided that had been a mistake on both our parts of epic proportions . Instead today, we both purchased a chocolate chip frappe (smile!) that was NOT from McDonalds so doesn't count in my addicted column. Since neither of us was particularly frothing at the mouth after drinking it, we think we made a more mature choice today.
 
After lunch we headed back out of town towards our home base, taking a side byway to over look a lake above Lake City. This was a stop that John and I had made before but the children had not, so we both got to share knowledge from previous travels. 
 
We got back to camp around 3:30 (87 degrees) and are relaxing for a little while. Later on we plan to play Rummie Cube (sp??). We started playing last night (first time for the two of us) and it looks to be a fun game. Not sure what our plans for tomorrow will be, so you will have to stay tuned!

By the way, the first video you will see was actually taken last evening. We all walked down to the river (The Rio Grande) before settling down for the night. It was so beautiful, we wanted to share a movie of part of our "Big Yard".
 
The Big Red Truck drove approximately 160 miles round trip today.