2021 Road Trip – Denver Visit

June 3, 2021

We rounded up the cats and moved into Aaron & Alysa’s apartment on Sunday. Penny had a loose tooth and I took a picture of her mouth so she could zoom in and analyze it (of course Evie had to join in on the photograph). All the attention to the tooth caused it to fall out on our watch. Aaron & Alysa were quite bummed to miss the “first tooth” event by only a few hours. Penny wrapped her tooth in a napkin and placed it under her pillow at bedtime. We were awakened Monday morning to the sounds of excitement that only a 6 year old could express after discovering that the Tooth Fairy had successfully visited and left a $1 bill in exchange for the tooth (I had offered to set a family precedent by leaving a $100 bill, but Aaron and Alysa were NOT interested in starting out at that level).

Unfortunately, both Sunday and Monday were complete washouts and we were stuck inside. The weather cleared up on Tuesday so we took the kids and the dog to a park with a very nice playground that Alysa had recommended. We took turns taking the dog on long walks while the other kept an eye on Chuckie. The kids had a great time and interacted well with the other children at the playground. On the way home we hit the Chick-fil-A drive through for some well earned nuggets.

The dog barks constantly every time it sees one of the cats, so we moved her kennel from the master bedroom to the living room and locked the cats in the master bedroom. Not knowing how the dog would react to her new sleeping environment, I slept in the living room with her. She started whimpering around 7AM on Wednesday morning because she could hear the kids talking in their bedroom. I decided this would be a good time for me to take her out to do her duties. We had a successful walk and when I came back in I went up and grabbed little Chuckie so I could take him downstairs and change his diaper and hopefully let Grandma sleep in. Due to my bad knees, I’m careful on the steps and take them one at a time even when I’m not carrying a 20 month old. I thought I was being especially careful, but somehow I reached for a step and it wasn’t there. Down I went from about the fourth step from the bottom. Once I knew I was going down, I cradled Chuckie like a football and fortunately, never fumbled. He made it through the event unscathed and never made a noise, not even when I screamed out in pain and called for Beth. I ended up squatting pretty hard on my knees (which hardly bend anyway) and thought sure I’d broken them or my legs, but once the pain subsided a bit I was able to get up and limp around. Therefore, I declared that we were still going to the park again today (much to my wife’s chagrin). When we got home from the park, I took a nap and when I woke up, my foot was still throbbing and “we” decided I ought to go get it checked out. I went to a local Urgent Care and they determined that the pain in my knees was just a major inflaming of my existing arthritis. Initially the attending physicians indicated that the pain in my foot was due to a broken Medial Cuneiform in my left foot. They put me in a boot and sent me home (two weeks later we found out from the Radiologist’s report that there was no break, and the foot felt pretty good after 3 weeks).

On Thursday, Aaron and Alysa arrived home from their wedding/honeymoon and we returned to the campground. We had originally intended to bring the girls back with us so they could spend one night in the camper, but we had to cancel that plan due to my foot. The girls were very disappointed. We had Aaron follow us back to the campground so that he could load my spare tire (and a couple of other heavy items) back into the Tahoe.

May 28, 2021

We left the Wakeeney, KS KOA promptly at 8AM CDT on Thursday (5/27) so that we could get setup at our campsite near Denver and then go visit the kids. We stopped at a car wash in Golden, CO that had a large vehicle wash-down area and did our best wash 1,900 miles of travel off of the RV. It was tight and we had to move the RV back and forth a couple of times in order to clean all of it, but it looks much better (from a distance).

We couldn’t get into one of our usual State Park campgrounds so this year we are staying at Dakota Ridge RV Park in Golden, CO. Mom and Dad have stayed here several times. The sites are smaller than at the State Parks, but this is a well maintained RV Park. The bad news is that the campground pool is closed due to a chlorine shortage. We were parked and had our camper setup by 1:30PM MDT.

Dakota Ridge RV Park – Site #M15 – Passenger

We headed over to visit Alysa and the Grandchildren at 3:30PM MDT. They were excited to see us and we were just as excited to see them. We got to meet our new Grand-puppy (Veda) as well (she’s an excitable puppy, but very well behaved). Aaron had to work so we didn’t expect to see him, but we got a surprise visit around 5:30PM MDT. We had originally planned to bring the Grandchildren and the Grand-puppy back to the campground on Sunday when Aaron and Alysa leave for their wedding/honeymoon, but we are starting to rethink that especially since the pool is closed. That would probably be too much to add to us and our three cats inside the camper and there’s not much area outside our camper to play.

Today (Friday) we are heading over to the apartment at 2PM MDT to watch the Grandchildren so that Alysa can go get her nails done for the wedding. When Aaron gets home from work we plan to all go out to dinner.