Stage Seven...all good things must come to an end

When the time came for Stage Seven: The Voyage home (it sounds like a Star Trek movie, doesn't it? Hey once a trekkie, always a trekkie) I think we all were feeling a little torn. We had fallen into the rhythm of vacation and were really enjoying ourselves, but we were also ready to come home and jump into the rest of summer.Which we did...so far it's been a great summer. Lots of baseball, time at the pool and memories of what I hope is the first of many historic Barry family vacations.That's it for now, my big honking nutshell of a summer, I hope this finds all of you happy and warms with your toes in the water.peace-sandy

Stage Six...Breckenridge will never be the same...

Stage Six: We rented a condo on the mountain in Breckenridge, again with Cindy and Trey. This was probably the most normal and typical part of the vacation. We soaked up all we could of the ski town in summer atmosphere. We did day trips to Vail and Copper Mountain. We also biked, hiked and went to the 4th of July parade on Main Street. We saw what we could of the Janssen Clan before they left and enjoyed the time we had alone.

Stage Five...wedding bells

Stage Five: The five of us pack up very dirty and very happy and head to Breckenridge for the wedding. We stayed at a snazzy resort with Cindy and Trey. The wedding was beyond gorgeous. The ceremony was held at Ten Mile Station halfway up the mountain. With snow covered peaks surrounding us and a bridal party that looked like they walked right out of the pages of Vogue it was one of the most striking ceremonies that I have ever attended. We all danced the night away and were thankful to be there as Kendra and Chris started their lives together.

Stage Four...happy campers

Stage Four: the real camping begins. We pitch our tents at Oh Be Joyful Falls on the Slate River. It was the perfect site. There was about 10 other campsites, all full without a banjo in the bunch. We found out that Oh Be Joyful Falls is like Shang gra la for kayakers. People come from all around the world to run the falls. After scaling a tree to cross the river and hiking up the side of a mountain we felt lucky to witness 3 of our fellow campers coming down. The boys were all duly impressed. My favorite part of camping was the campfire at night. Sitting around it with the boys, no TV, no video games or music, just conversation. Who knew we had so much to say?

Stage Three...lions, tigers and WHAT?!?!

Stage three: Jake's birthday. we load up big blue yet and again and drive a scenic 5 hours to Crested Butte. This was to be the camping portion of our trip. We struck out at our first choice of camp sites at Lake Irwin. It was still closed because of too much snow! We were all disappointed because it was a really picturesque spot. We felt we made the right decision not to stay there after meeting the only others campers braving the snow (think deliverance with big dogs). We were further vindicated in our choice to leave when we drove past a LARGE black bear a mile outside of the camp site. Thank goodness our friend Tony, who lives in Cressted Butte, had an extra room for us to crash in that night.

Stage Two...the Barrys reach New Heights...

Stage two: (I know the title is too puny, but I couldn't resist!) After arriving safely in Colorado Springs, we immediately caught up with our dear friend Mark and his family. We spent the weekend exploring caves, scaling Pikes Peak, wandering around in the Garden of the Gods and playing with horses.

The Grizwalds got nothing on us

Summer time and the living isn't just easy, it's down right lazy! We have been back from an amazing family vacation for over three weeks and I'm just now getting around to posting about it, shame on me for not immortalizing this epic family vacation while it was still fresh in my mind. As it is, I'll have to rely on my spotty recollections and pictures to piece together the two and a half weeks we tramped about Colorado.

This whole adventure came about because my lovely niece and her fiancee were kind enough to decide to get married in Breckenridge. Brian and I smelled a road trip the moment they set the date.

We joked that this was the A.D.D. vacation... put more kindly, it unfolded in several distinct stages.

Stage one: load up the van and head west young man. The boys were troopers for the 16+ hour drive straight through to Colorado Springs. The van was jam packed with 2 tents, all of our sleeping bags and camping gear, 5 bikes off the back, my road bike on top and a Thule rocket box. It brought to mind the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian, if we tried to fit one thin wafer mint more into that poor car I'm pretty sure it would have exploded.