The wanderers return

Well, we’re back. It was a very good holiday. When I said “a week or two”, I was understating a little. We were away, in fact, for 2 weeks and 2 days. Maybe the American week is bigger than the British week.

I made a marvellous discovery in Colorado. Now you know how much I like our neighborhood pool. I’m afraid to say that they do much better in the Rockies. Yup. They sure do. They have hot springs.

We tried out hot springs in three different towns. It made me want to move to Colorado. Imagine having neighborhood hot springs instead of a neighborhood pool. It’s like having a warm bath in the middle of the afternoon, under the guise of entertaining your children. The one I liked best was in Ouray, the Switzerland of America as it is known, where you are in a sort of basin surrounded by peaks, and can't raise your eyes without enjoying stunning mountain views [you have to click on "Today's Movie" to make this worth watching, by the way]. Whoever had designed the Ouray hot springs had put careful thought into the layout, and had got it 100% right. I hope he or she got an award. It was set out so that there was a bath-hot pool in which one could do some serious lounging, whilst watching one’s off-spring play in the adjoining ice-cold pool to which they were attracted by a couple of big slides. This seems to me to be the ideal arrangement: adults lounge in the warmth while children cavort in the cold. There was also an intermediate tepid pool to one side, where one could play with the off-spring when required, meaning that I never, not once, ever, had to venture into the cold pool at all. I should mention at this point that Husband earned himself huge totals of brownie points – that’s UK girl guide brownie points, not US chocolate brownie points, although he could have had those too if he had wanted, such was my gratitude – by accompanying the off-spring into the cold pool when necessary, which actually amounted to a very long time. So not all the adults got to do all the lounging. Those who have a long-standing love affair with the hot bath took priority.

I developed a theory. When you visit the Rockies, you are very aware of their history, and how the great gold rushes of the late 19th century led to this harsh country being populated. There is evidence of mining all around, of fortunes being made and lost, of hopes and dreams, of new beginnings, of hardship and adventure. I’m not sure this was all to do with gold, though. I reckon word got out about the hot springs. I mean, if you were a pioneer, in a dusty covered wagon, your limbs aching from the bone-shaking motion, your feet sore from walking, your children dirty and tired, wouldn’t the promise of hot springs have done it for you? Just one “there’s hot springs in them thar hills” and I’d have been leaping on the front horse and whipping it to within an inch of its poor beleaguered life, stopping for the briefest of moments when the baby fell out of the back of the wagon, and turning back for it only because the cries of the older children were so piteous when I suggested that we would have more chance of being first at the springs if we let another wagon stop to pick it up.

This was my theory, at any rate, until we got home to the plains. Back home on the range, I looked up Weatherbug on the internet, and was a little dismayed to find that the weather forecast for the next 5 days didn’t show any temperatures below 100 degrees. It has definitely hotted up since we went away. We had been warned, but as with all these things, you don’t quite believe it till you experience it. So I am pleased to be back to the neighborhood pool, which is open for another 3 weeks until Labor day. Neighborhood hot springs have their time and place, but I guess here and now is not it.

I have also to report, with some degree of smugness, that we only had ONE fast food meal in all our time away. Travelling with 3 children in America, this represents something of an achievement. The one fast food meal we did have was very well worth it. The lady behind the counter, on hearing our accents, went a bit dreamy and asked if we had ever met Sir Paul McCartney. I was sorry to have to disappoint her, but it was nice to be asked. Our visit to the establishment also meant that I could listen all evening to 3-yo talking about Burger Ting (she can’t say the sound “k” at the beginning of a word, not even in Tolorado), which was unbelievably sweet. Tute, one might venture.