Happiness is losing track of how many times one has visited Colorado. By my estimation, I believe I’ve visited the Centennial State more times than any other place outside of Missouri. (A native of Hannibal, I refuse to count Quincy, Illinois, a.k.a. “America’s Armpit”, because I only went there for their mall and off-track betting.)
The first time I can remember visiting Colorado was when I was very young, maybe six or seven years old, back in the late 1970s. My family and I toured the Colorado Springs area on our way to California, taking in attractions such as the popular Seven Falls park and the Royal Gorge bridge.
That road trip included stops at the Grand Canyon, Disneyland, and the Golden Gate Bridge as well, and it proved to be the only big vacation our family ever took together due to my parents divorcing just a few years later. Maybe that’s why I make family vacations such a priority now.
The next time I visited Colorado was in the early 1990s when my college roommate and I embarked upon an unforgettable road trip to Las Vegas. On our way back to Missouri, we decided to take I-70 through Colorado. We stopped at a visitors’ center outside the small town of Rifle, where we told the nice lady at the information desk that we were from Hannibal, Missouri.
“You’re like Tom and Huck going on an adventure!” she said.“The mayor will want to meet you!” She quickly pointed us in the direction of the mayor’s restaurant and said he would be expecting us.
When we arrived at the greasy spoon, the mayor welcomed us as the folk heroes we knew ourselves to be. Mayor Dave plied us with free bison burgers and Rockies beer and declared us honorary goodwill ambassadors from Rifle. He deputized us with decals shaped like sheriff’s badges, and the three of us posed for pictures together. I haven’t been back there since, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see our photo hanging on the wall.
In 2007, Bethany, Alex, and I joined Bethany’s sisters and their families on a camping trip to Estes Park and Colorado Springs. We hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park, drove through the Garden of the Gods, and sampled water at Manitou Springs. We visited Estes Park again in 2015 at the end of an epic RV adventure through the Badlands, the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and the Rockies. We went back to Estes again just last week.
During this latest trip, the Naughtons, the Heckers (Bethany’s twin sister Charla’s family), and the twins’ mother Glee once again visited Rocky Mountain National Park where we drove theTrail Ridge Road, the highest elevation road of any national park, hiked to 12,000 feet on the Alpine Ridge Trail, climbed Alberta Falls, and circumnavigated our old favorite, Bear Lake, for the third time.
We also spent some time in nearby Fort Collins. I had been to the northern Colorado town several times over the years to visit my friend Troy, with whom I share a love of live music. He and I have been to concert venues up and down the Front Range. During this most recent trip, in the age of Covid, live music was not an option, so Troy and his lovely girlfriend Tina hosted an 80s-themed backyard movie night for the Naughton family. Beetlejuice was a big hit with the kids, even if Troy and I laughed louder than them.
Since November, Fort Collins has also been home to my brother Blake and his family. Both he and his wonderful wife Meredith are now professors at Colorado State University. All of us, including my dad—who felt adventurous enough to drive out to Colorado to stay at the famous Stanley Hotel in Estes—spent a fun afternoon together exploring Old Town and dining at local eateries. (We wore masks and/or maintained social distancing everywhere we went, and not once did I feel like my civil liberties were being infringed upon.)
No Naughton trip to Colorado would be complete without a complication or two. Five years ago, on the way home from Estes Park, the selector on the dashboard of our RV that switched from heat to a/c got stuck in the blast furnace position. To make matters worse, the generator stopped working, which disabled the rooftop air conditioning unit as well. For fourteen excruciating hours, we drove across eastern Colorado and the full length of Kansas (a state I hate even more than Illinois) in our sweltering motor home. We opened all the windows to try to get some relief, but whenever one of the kids opened the bathroom door to relieve themselves, a vacuum was created that sucked the sewer gases through the toilet and into the RV’s cabin, turning the recreational vehicle into Satan’s colon.
This year, the trip home was marred by a severe oil leak from the rear differential of my heavy-duty truck that caused our camping trailer to look like it had been towed behind the Exxon Valdez. The sound emanating from the differential’s under-lubricated gears was so loud that even the radio could not drown it out.
The problem was unfortunately discovered somewhere in the wilds of Nebraska (because I refused to repeat the drive through Hell/Kansas again) after all the service stations had closed for the evening, so we were forced to drive slowly for the remainder of the trip, expecting a catastrophic failure to happen at any moment.
Luckily, we made it home in one piece after fifteen tension-filled hours on the road.
Maybe the problems we’ve had while driving back to Missouri are just Colorado’s way of trying to convince us that we belong in the mountains. Take it easy, Colorado, I don’t need that much convincing.
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