Vacations Part 1

It used to be that when someone said vacation I thought of Colorado. It was the main part of the first big vacation I can remember. Before Disneyland, or Stone Mountain, or San Antonio there was a deer sticking his head through the window of the van and eating a crazy ball. It might have been an elk. I think I remember it, but so much of the trip has been retold among the family and friends that went with us, that I don't know what is my memory and what is just the visual images the stories conjure. That trip was only the beginning. Throughout the time I lived with my parents, Colorado was our most popular vacation destination. We would go other places, occasionally, but we would go to Colorado regularly.

When I was a kid I wanted our parents to build another house in Colorado with a hallway connecting the two. I thought if we did that I could visit every day. I must have slept through Kansas on that first trip (I recommend everyone but the driver do this). I learned to hate Kansas for its geography long before I hated it for the Jayhawks. God may have put the flattest, ugliest land between Missouri and Colorado just to teach me patience. Have you ever noticed that if you have a puzzle of the 50 states you can take Kansas out and almost alll-most slide Colorado into that spot? I would do that often as a kid, dreaming of a Kansas-less America. (Some of this ire was raised by this article where a national sports writer and MU grad takes shots at Missouri) I loved Colorado, though, and was willing to deal with Kansas to get there.

Then, I lived in Denver for two years destroying the idea of Colorado as a vacation spot. So this summer I took my family to Omaha. My next post (assuming I write again before another year passes) will be about this year's vacation (with pictures).