Dispatch from Colorado: 2

I’ve been away from the Blogio for awhile, but I’m going to fast forward to right now. I’m at my parents’ house in Estes Park, Colorado. (Pete didn’t come because he had to work yesterday.) Estes Park is a small tourist town in the mountains about an hour northwest of Boulder. No, there’s no skiing here – they had a ski resort for a couple years back in the 80’s I think but they didn’t get enough snow to keep it going. So in the winter we do snowshoeing and if there’s no snow, then we go hiking. Its proximity to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) is Estes Park’s main claim to fame. In the summer the place goes crazy with tourists from all over. It’s truly a madhouse.

Fortunately my parents don’t live right in town. They live in a duplex up Highway 7 near the golf course. In fact they’re about one block from the golf course. They don’t golf though. They retired here from Omaha maybe 5 years ago and they do lots of cool stuff like volunteer at the library and at the visitors’ center, do stuff with their church, go hiking and hang out with their friends. Their neighbors in the other half of their duplex have a pool table in their basement so sometimes my parents go over there, have drinks and play pool. If you know my parents you may have trouble picturing that. I sure do. I guess it’s true that parents have real lives outside of what we know. Anyway my dad also goes skiing a lot (he and his friend Mac drive to Winter Park down the highway a couple hours) and in the summer he is part of the Bighorn Brigade.

There are bighorn sheep in RMNP and there are periods during the summer when they come down this one mountain to get to these salt licks in this meadow with lots of little ponds (known as the Sheep Lakes). They have to cross the park road to get to this meadow which means a couple of things. One is that a stupid tourist might hit them with their car. Another is that when tourists spot these sheep they go INSANE and stop their cars in the middle of the road causing a traffic jam. Then they even get out of their cars because they are SO STUPID that they think it’d be a good idea if they chased the sheep around so they could get a close up picture. They are awesome-looking and rare sheep and I go bonkers when I see one too (although I always stay in the car!!). In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one close up (Momster, is this true?) and I’ve been coming to this place since I was like three. We used to vacation here every other summer for my whole life. What I’m getting at is they are magnificent to see but the tourists, they need some guidance. And that’s where the Bighorn Brigade comes in. My dad works certain shifts and he has a uniform and a little kiosk where he hangs out and people can ask him questions. And if the sheep come down the mountain then he stops the traffic on the road so the sheep can get by safely. Of course he also has to keep the tourists from getting too close to the sheep. He does this by shooting them (the tourists) with a pistol. Just kidding! My dad is opposed to guns. So he uses a bow and arrow. Just kidding! He kicks them in the nuts. Just kidding! I actually don’t know how he does it. But in my heart, although I’m a peace-loving woman, I do hope he at least gets to give them a smack on the head.

I come here every Thanksgiving. I’ve been doing it for about 6 years or more, and we have the routine down pat. I fly on Thanksgiving Day. My sister A also comes from Wisconsin. Momster and her family come every other year, by car. The opposite years they go to my brother-in-law’s parents’ house in Iowa. This is a year that they’re in Iowa. My sister A and I meet at Denver International Airport (DIA). DIA is a lovely airport if you ever have a chance to go there. The only problem is that it’s out in the middle of farkity-fark nowhere. A and I take a shuttle to Boulder where my dad and possibly other family members pick us up at the Marriott. This year my mom came which is a treat. When Momster and her family are in town, my mom doesn’t come to Boulder with my dad to get us because she likes Momster’s family better than A and I so she stays home with them. Which is totally understandable, as I also prefer Momster’s family to A and my sorry-ass self.

We eat lunch in Boulder and then we drive up here to Estes Park. Since Thanksgiving Day gets eaten up (so to speak) with flying and driving, by the time we get home it’s like 2 or 3 PM. Too late to cook turkey and all that. So we have my birthday dinner instead and then we have Thanksgiving on Friday. That’s today.

In my family when it’s your birthday, you get to pick what you want for dinner. Every year for as long as I can remember, I think it goes back to high school times, I have had black bean soup and rice. My dad orders a special spice mix from New Orleans. It’s so good I can’t stand it. My dad puts a ham bone in it and sometimes also andouille sausage. Oh man. I can’t even tell you how good it is. (My sister A doesn’t like it so she eats tomato soup!)

Also when it’s your birthday you get a birthday cake with candles, and the family turns off the lights and sings Happy Birthday. There is also a tradition where the whole family pretends all day that there’s no birthday cake for you. All day people say things like:

-- "Too bad there’s not going to be any dessert tonight. I guess we’ll have to have to eat stale old cookies."
-- "You better have seconds because there’s no dessert tonight."
-- "I’m so full! Good thing there’s no dessert."
-- Etc. etc.

The birthday person just plays along, as I did yesterday. Surprise surprise, there was birthday cake last night, pure chocolate craziness. Also, it was shaped like a triangle.

Then we read books and stuff by the fire and go to bed. Now it’s Friday which means the Colorado-Nebraska football game is on, and later on we’ll have turkey. (And then, read books and stuff by the fire and go to bed.) It’s a gorgeous sunny day and I can see the mountains out the window. There are lots of trees and the sky is the bluest I’ve ever seen. I hope it snows tomorrow. I miss snow.

My dad just announced that he forgot to put sugar in the pumpkin pie. Eek! He has proposed two solutions: 1) load it up with Cool Whip and if it still tastes too weird then 2) chuck it and eat leftover birthday cake!

My parents have dial-up so I’m not going to put up any pictures of E.P. because that would make me blow a gasket with impatience. I’ll owe ya.