Estes Park Wool Festival, yes, you read that correctly

Sometimes the best things are unplanned. This is one of those times. We had wanted to see Estes Park after hearing how beautiful is was. When I pulled it up online, I saw the “largest wool festival West of the Mississippi” would be there that weekend, so we thought, why not?

We were amazed at how much we learned and how much fun it was to see and pet the llamas, alpacas, sheep, goats and bunnies. Did you know there are angora goats? I had no idea there were so many kinds of sheep and goats and how incredibly soft they can be.

These English Angora Rabbits were so interesting. In case you're confused, this is his face.

We watched a sheep dog demonstration, the judging of alpaca fleece, a sheep show and a llama show where they actually tried to make their llamas run thru obstacle courses. Yes, I said tried. Llamas can be up to 400lbs and I saw a few of the big ones FLAT OUT REFUSE to do that crazy stuff. It was hilarious!

This little guy was about a third of the size of the others, but he had no hesitation jumping over the same height bar. 

We watched people spinning the fibers into thread, which would later be turned into yarn, then watched others weaving the yarn into garments. The kids and I learned how to needle felt- basically stabbing the wool fibers into a felt piece on top of foam with a barbed needle. It was fun and the girl running the booth liked our creation so much, she kept it to use as an example for others.

Dinosaur Ridge

Asher and Journey love dinosaurs, so when I found Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison, Colorado had actual dinosaur prints and bones, we just had to go. I called one of my FB twin moms who lived nearby and we met her and her three children there.
We took a shuttle tour up to the four different sites. We were told this land used to be a flat beach and the permanent rock "waves" are evidence of the ocean that was once here.

Over 300 tracks, some from a mother and baby Iguanodon, have been identified in this area. It is just an amazing site! Ridge volunteers periodically use charcoal to darken the prints to make it easier for visitors to see.

 Another stop gets you up close to the "dinosaur bulges". The mountain is made of layer upon layer of uniform rock, but then you have these large bulges where the very large, very heavy dinosaur's foot pressed thru the layers before it hardened into the rock. Some are so detailed you can even see the direction the dinosaur was walking!

The bone quarry is where the first stegosaurus was discovered and is now one of the few places that you can actually touch fossilized dinosaur bones still in the rocks, as Asher is doing here!

Directly across the street is this gorgeous view and road to Red Rocks Amphitheater, which was closed 

for a concert when we drove thru, but was still a spectacular sight to see from the outside.

Here we are with my twin mama friend, Mary, and her kiddos with a very curious Iguanodon.

Twin MOMS Unite

Let me tell you a secret about being a twin mom. It's very, very fun...and it's very, very hard. We have special support needs because having two kids that are exactly the same age is COMPLETELY different than having one or two children of different ages. Not saying it's harder (though in many ways it is, while in some it's not) but it brings different challenges, so often it just feels easier to relate to someone who also lives this life. Luckily there are groups that are specifically for twin moms to support each other and I am was lucky enough to have two of them. One was my local group of twin moms in Vegas, the LV MOMS (Mothers Of Multiples). Unfortunately I didn't find them until about a year before we left. I wish I had joined them from the get-go because they are awesome! They organize moms only nights at least once a month, family events about as often and playgroups whenever needed. I have some really great friends from that group. *This is a local chapter of a national group for twin moms, so if you are one, I highly recommend finding your local chapter and joining!
Here's Asher and Journey with their twin friends at the club's Easter egg hunt. 

THEN I have this other group....we have been together for four years now. We began as a support group on Babycenter.com for women expecting twins in April of 2011. So all of our children were due the same month, even though their actual birthdays are spread apart by up to 4 months, but this means that we are all going thru roughly the same stages at the same time. We have gone thru pregnancy, birth, baby stages and potty training together. We have since transitioned our group to Facebook and have become a very active group who offers support for each other and a place to safely vent frustrations (I'm telling you, having twins can be very frustrating at times, especially when they are both 3 years old and not napping anymore!) There are roughly 50 moms from all over the US and Canada. We organized a trip to Vegas a couple years back and I was able to meet a handful of them in person. 5 moms - 11 kids + Vegas =  a crazy few days!

We had a fake bachelorette party and it *may* have ended Hangover style....

 But you know what they say, what happens here.... 

Another mom, Liese, lives in California so we have met up with her family multiple times when we were out there.

What does this have to do with our trip? Well, I'm trying to meet as many of my FB mom friends, and their twins, as I can while our adventures take us across the US. So when you see me mention a FB twin mom, you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Welcome to Denver, Colorado

We spent two weeks just north of Denver at the St Vrain State Park. It was a scenic spot right at the edge of a lake which is home to bald eagles, and snow-capped mountains in the distance....and then the mosquitos! My kids have never seen a mosquito before and let me tell you, ignorance really is bliss when it comes to these bugs, which my kids now call "skeetos".

Beautiful sunset from my kitchen window!

One of our very best friends lives near Denver. Her 3 yr old was due on the exact same day as Asher and Journey and her newest addition is now 7 months old. The kids haven't seen each other in nearly two years, but they seemed like they have always been together.

Watching a movie together

If you're wondering, yes we brought our bounce house on the road with us! 

Very few places have room to put it up, so we took it to their house to play! 

We all went to the Denver zoo together. I was extremely impressed with their bat exhibit. There had to be at least a hundred small bats and they were in a dark cave-like enclosure with one light so that you could watch thru the glass as they fluttered around and hung upside down. We had been pointing out bats to the kids lately, but they had never seen one that close before and were having a hard time understanding how they sleep upside down, so this was a perfect display for them to see.

Journey had kept saying that the elephant is what she was most looking forward to, so when we found out we could watch a training session with the elephant, I was pretty excited for her. We watched as they coaxed him to lift his feet so they could check him from a distance and finally into swimming.

Apparently it rains just a little bit almost every afternoon in the Denver area. While at the zoo, the rain came towards the end of our visit and actually felt great, however the kids were pretty upset about getting wet, not used to rain, living in Vegas. Fast forward a few days when the temp dropped and I told Asher we need to rush into the store to avoid the rain. He said "no hurry, Ashey loooove rain!" I just love him.

OK back to the zoo, so while everyone else was running for the exit, we continued our visit and I was surprised to see that the rain really stirred the animals up and we saw so much activity and interaction that we would have missed otherwise. Like these feisty zebras that we watched running around and wrestling each other for 10 minutes.

 Other favorites: The Paradise Tanager, "mangos" and a chameleon 

Oh and Asher liked the rainforest room so much that he said we should 

paint Daddy's truck like the rainforest. That would be a good surprise someday!

Of course we rode the carousel and Journey picked the zebra.

They had so much fun, that even after 7 hours we had to drag them out!

Hanging Lake, Colorado

My search of best trails in Colorado sent us to the town of Glenwood Springs to hike the Hanging Lake trail. It's a mountaintop lake that pours down as a giant waterfall into the Colorado River. We hiked alongside the waterfall/river the entire way and actually crossed over it seven times using bridges. I was super impressed with the kids hiking on this one. It was steep with large rocks to climb most of the way up and the kids hiked about the first third of it. Asher actually complained that his legs were "owie on the inside" when he woke the next morning. Ah, those are sore muscles, little guy!

 

I found it very interesting that when I70 was routed thru Glenwood Canyon it took 30 years to complete due to environmental protests and requirements to leave the canyon as undisturbed as possible. There was very little blasting done, and where it was necessary they brought artists in to sculpt and paint the exposed rock to match the canyon walls! In the end it cost 40 times the average cost per mile for the 12 mile stretch- a staggering $490 million (equivalent to $800 million today)!

On our hike the kids saw their first dandelion and had fun blowing the seeds, 

however Asher thought he was supposed to blow on the stem, ha!

This is the view from our campground near Glenwood Springs. 

Those mountains looked like they were covered in green velvet, and coming from the desert, 

they just did not even look real. Notice you can see the Colorado River and the 

working railroad tracks are right at the base of the mountains.

As Daddy hooked up the RV, we took a walk around the campground and Asher held Journey's hand to help her on the steep part and they ended up holding hands and running together most of the walk. It was so sweet and sadly I didn't bring a camera, oh well. 

As we continued on towards Denver, we stopped for an outdoor lunch at a lakeside marina in Dillon. There was a playground nearby and we were happy to spend more time there admiring the huge snow-capped mountains and lake. This place was just gorgeous!

Next stop....Denver!