99.4º. Hardly something to be called a fever, but possibly an ominous beginning to a week of camping and cruising in the Colorado mountains. Especially when one remembers how much work goes into camping.

I never knew it, as a child. All I did was pack up my clothes and get up at some unearthly hour to head off for another Yosemite vacation. But when you're a mom, with three wildly active kids....well, actually, it *was* easier this year. And more enjoyable. True, we did only have pit toilets and the only 'running' water came from a pump (quite good for toning those arms!), but at least I didn't have to constantly be prying Megan out of tailpipes, and encouraging her to play in something other than dirt. This year I only had to keep her from following her hardy, older brothers up landslide-infested hills, and from jumping off 4000 ft cliffs. I think that's an upgrade.

The boys weren't the only ones charging up mountains. Mark led us up 12,200 (or thereabouts) ft Cumberland Pass, during the course of the day's Ghost Town Tours. That wouldn't have been so bad had it been a paved road. And wider than the car. And had a guard rail. And no traffic coming the other way. Ok, there were only two or three cars going the other direction. But we were both pretty giddy by the time we got to the top.

We saw lots of abandoned mines, though. I kept trying to sneak into them, but someone had thoughtfully closed each one off. (I'm kidding, here, folks. I wouldn't have ventured more than a foot or two in. Not without my flashlight.) And Ouray, we saw Ouray. What a perfect little town! That town is the official start of the Million Dollar Highway, but I'd say the section preceding it had to be at least $900,000. It's hard to believe such places exist when you're in Lubbocktown.....and hard to believe Lubbock exists while nestled in the Rockies.

After three days of camping/pioneering (I never would have made it as one of those frontier women) we were ready to move onto a more civilized campground, one with showers. However, the rain near Durango urged us to find a hotel instead. Reluctantly, we followed its lead, and one night and numerous washcloths later, we were ready to tackle Mesa Verde.

There, Daniel was appointed by the Park Ranger Guide to be a Junior Ranger for the Cliff Palace tour and to guide the people to where she (the ranger) wanted them to gracefully pile up. Everyone commented on his fine job and he stood a few inches higher the rest of the way. He even got a badge.

Megan got a badge, too, for filling out a questionnaire (ok, Daniel did the writing), and gained a best friend while on the tour. They held hands and cried when apart. (Little girls are sooooo different than little boys....) Her summary of our primitive campsite? "The toilets are out of water."

Well, after Mesa Verde, we went to Four Corners Monument (endless jokes about leaving a sibling behind in another state) then passed Shiprock and lots of Navajo hogans, all facing east. We'd also visited the Black Canyon of the Gunnison earlier, and fished, and swam.....and so, replete, we headed home after said Four Corners. On the long drive home, we stumbled across a 'Seventies Saturday' radio show and were entertained by such forgotten songs as "I Must Let the Show Go On" (Three Dog Night......anyone remember that one? Starting with a classic circus-organ riff?) and Peaches and Herb's "RE-u-NITed HEY HEY........". We also noted that KC and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight" only had two different notes in the whole song - until the very end, where a third note was thrown in. And there was much rejoicing.

So we've been out of touch for a while, and not just because of vacation. Our Windows registry refused to let us go onto the Net, so we had to reformat. But now, we're back, and will be putting our Colorado-Utah-Arizona-New Mexico vacation pictures up at Photopoint as soon as they're developed, and scanned, and oops, have to install the scanner again, and......they'll be up there sometime.

Nice to see y'all again.

PS It was only a mild cold.

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