Glenwood Springs

We spent Easter weekend in Glenwood Springs, CO. We had planned on going over Spring Break, but Haden caught the stomach flu so we dealt with that instead. I picked our hotel based on the swimming pool. It was a zero entry and had a couple of slides. The kids LOVED it!! We spent the first night swimming. Regan and Haden both liked sliding down the kiddie slide into a foot of water by themselves and going down the big slide on our laps. Even Lila got to go down. (I loved not having any lifeguards there enforcing rules!)
The next day we planned on spending at Glenwood Canyon Adventure Park. The adventure park is on top of the mountain accessible to the public only by tram. The tram, however, had been struck by lightening the night before and was inoperable so we were loaded up into 4x4 vans and taken up the mountain. This is where I learned my first lesson on planning vacations for my family. Spring means wind. The top of a mountain means wind. Regan is TERRIFIED of the wind. She immediately abandons whatever activity and begs to go home when there is even the slightest breeze. Luckily, there was no wind during the cave tour. It was an interesting cave. Haden was disappointed that he couldn't find any pirate treasure, but had fun searching for quite a while. Lila loved the cave, until she fell sound asleep. Regan was just grateful she was out of the wind.

The view of Glenwood Springs from the Adventure Park.

Inspiration Point, accessible only through the cave.

Lesson number two came when we tried to watch the 4D movie. It wasn't working the first time we went, or the second. Thankfully, by the third time, they had it figured out. Hitting the touristy places off season is not always a good idea-many things are either closed or broken. Anyway, there were 3 movies. 2 were 5 minutes and the third was 14 minutes. You wear 3D glasses and sit in chairs that move, spray water at you, etc. Regan and Clint loved it. Haden began yelling within the first 30 seconds and I got motion sickness. Thankfully, it went away when I closed my eyes. The line to the Alpine Slide was outside and both kids refused to go into the wind to stand in it.

Fortunately, we found their Speleo Box. It's a maze in a box. The kids apprehensively climbed in, but had so much fun, they did it over and over. The sign recommended that you have less than a 39 inch waist and are shorter than 6 feet to enter. So, I tried it. There is absolutely no way that anyone much bigger than Regan can navigate that thing. I quickly gave up and backed out.

Haden found the big sandbox full of sand toys and dump trucks and was in heaven.

By the time we were ready to go the tram was working again, although much slower than usual.
We headed back to the hotel where the kids could not wait to get back in the pool. Regan even went down the big slide by herself and timidly put her face under the water!!!
Lila was happy playing with the ipod. She was so excited to watch the music video for "Queen of the Waves" from Barbie in a Mermaid Tale. She loves that song! It was the first time she watched it on the ipod instead of the computer. She kept looking at me in amazement! The next day I had planned on hiking Hanging Lake, but the mountains were supposed to get 10-20 inches of snow, so we came home instead.