Colorado Cousin Road Trip (June 2023)

Our summer kicked off with our first visit to our family in Grand Junction, Colorado and Colorado National Monument.

We visited this dinosaur museum and no one was more excited about it than Arthur. He was shrieking with glee at every skeleton.

Yes, Arthur was so excited until he saw this animatronic dinosaur. He 100% believed it was real. We explained it wasn't real, that it was a robot and couldn't get him, none of it mattered. He is still talking about the robot dinosaur and how scary it is.

He did not, however, think this diorama of a Utah Raptor decapitating an Apatosaurus was scary. He thought it was great.

On Saturday morning we got to watch my niece Sonya finish first place at a race (was it a 10k? It was something like that) and then we went up the canyon into Colorado National Monument.

First order of business is, of course, doing the junior ranger booklets, and enjoying the view. Then I made everyone do two short hikes. 

Did the kids complain the whole time? Yeah. Pretty much. The destination was worth the journey, I think, because once we got to the end of the second hike they had a great time playing around the Devil's Kitchen.

Between the shade and a nice wind blowing through the rocks and hoodoos, the Devil's Kitchen was a most pleasant spot. We rested from the hot sun and climbed to up to all the little nooks we could reach.

The desert was really blooming for us, we saw all sort of wild flowers along the way!

And capping off our fun activities with our Johnson cousins: bubbles and bounce house-o-rama! Arthur regularly asks to do this again and likes to watch the videos again and again. It really was such a fun time to visit them, I am sure it won't be our last trip to Grand Junction!

The kids absolutely didn't want to come home, but there jobs and chores and mundane things to get back to. Luckily our cousins came to visit us this summer as well, which I will get to in the future. Tah!