Share the Adventure: CO Road Trip Day 3

Our first stop on Day 3 was in Mingo, Kansas. Our family enjoys geocaching together (Lucas and I went geocaching a lot when we were first married, and we paused for several years before picking it back up again this year). Mingo is a small town in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, but it is renowned in the geocaching world for having the world's oldest active geocache. There are also a few other neat caches in the town, so I planned out four to find before the oldest cache so that it could be our milestone #500. What I didn't account for was that we wouldn't be able to find one of them (a "DNF" in the geocaching world).

One of the caches was at a church that also had a playground. Cooper, who loves taking off his shoes in the van but can't put them back on himself, ran off barefoot, and I let him, only to find him crying on the sidewalk with thorns stuck in his foot. Oops. Parenting fail.

This was a large, unique geocache container full of little treasures.

Here I am finding one stuck in a hole in the light pole.

Another unique container.

And making the short trek to the world's oldest active geocache...

We made it! Unfortunately, the plaque commemorating it had been vandalized recently.

Back on the road! These guys are constantly wanting snacks!

Finally made it to Colorado!

There was a geocache on this sign, so this ended up being our #500 milestone geocache.

We found another awesome playground at Parmer Park in Burlington, CO.

It was super hot this day, so we didn't last too long on the playground and soon took a break for lunch.

Then we walked over to the splash pad to cool off!

All tuckered out. Colson falls asleep most often, and then Cooper. It's pretty rare for Calvin to fall asleep!

There were two parks I wanted to check out in Denver on the way to Boulder. It was 100 degrees, though, and pretty miserable, even with water features. We ended up only making it to one of the parks -- Westminster Station Nature Playground.

We hopped back in the van for the short (and beautiful) drive to Boulder.

My aunt and uncle live at the base of a mountain in Boulder, and there is an empty house next door to them owned by my cousin that we were graciously allowed to stay in for 4 nights. One of the highlights of the place was this awesome tree house in the yard.

That first night in Boulder, we went to Chautauqua Park for a summer series called "Meadow Music." A singing, acting, environmentally-educating couple named Jeff and Paige encourage young families to bring a picnic dinner, go on a kid-friendly hike, and then enjoy the outdoor concert! This was RIGHT up my alley, and I was so lucky to have discovered this on the calendar!

Spotting our first little cactus! I was huffing and puffing on the "child-friendly" hike -- from my pregnancy, the extreme heat, the altitude, or a combination!

Picnic time!

The songs were all very interactive, fun, and educational. We still sing one of them regularly, a month later!

I even learned something new -- like the term "ungulate"

The little boys were set on using their souvenir money to buy one of these cool shirts that opens up and has the animal mouth under the flap. Here's Jeff demonstrating:

They loved chopping at each other! (What they didn't love was that later in the trip, they didn't have much souvenir money left!)

Beautiful sunset. I love the mountains!

Winding down for the day...

A mostly empty house = many of us sleeping on air mattresses! Here's Carter's corner:

Calvin stayed upstairs (here he is on the spiral stairs showing off his missing tooth!)

And here's how the little boys slept the first night. I ended up splitting them up the next night and then reconfiguring the couch the next night when Colson fell off the bed again.