Stone Mountain Lodge & RMNP

I wasn't holding out hope when I went to start the day. I ran the sink water for a long time. It never got warm. I called the front desk; they said maintenance was working on it. I took a quick cold shower.

Once Edrik and I were ready, we walked down to the front desk together — partly to ask about the situation, partly so I could mention, calmly, that we were flying out today and that my wife still needed to shower. That's when they offered to comp the room. I went back upstairs and let Jacqui and Sierra know. Edrik and I then took a few minutes by the car so he could do his Dribble Up — he has a daily streak going of over a year, and he'd carried it through the entire trip. We packed up. We pointed the Highlander south.

Cheyenne to Lyons is about three hours of straightforward Front Range driving. We picked up gas at the Pilot in Cheyenne, dropped south on I-25, exited onto US-36, and started climbing west toward the foothills.

Stone Mountain Lodge sits in a small valley outside Lyons, Colorado, and it's where Jacqui and I got married. The whole route of Day 7 had been built around twenty minutes there. Off-season, mid-day, the lodge didn't look the way it does when there's a wedding in full swing — the white tents are gone, the grounds are quiet, nothing like the photos we keep from the day. That was almost more interesting. We walked the property and showed the kids where everything had been.

We have a picture in our living room from the wedding — an outdoor group shot of all the guests, taken on the lodge grounds. We pointed out exactly where the photographer had been standing when he took it, and the kids took that in for a beat. It's a strange thing to show your children: this is where your life with them got started, before you knew them. Jacqui and I had a moment together. The kids stood with us for it. Two deer wandered close while we talked. Then we got back in the car.

From Lyons it's another hour up to Estes Park and into Rocky Mountain National Park. We hadn't been on the original itinerary for RMNP — we'd added it mid-trip, once it was clear we'd have time before the redeye and the weather was holding — but it was the right call.

The line at the entrance gate was the day's first surprise: nearly twenty minutes to get in. Two of the three gates were closed for the off-season; one ranger was working the third alone. Once we made it through, we headed up Trail Ridge Road. The road only opens fully in late May or early June — winter snowpack closes everything above Many Parks Curve Overlook from October through spring — so we drove as far as the road went and turned around there.

On the way up we saw something Edrik had been wanting for years: moose. Two of them, off to the side of the road, a younger one and an older one. We thought at first they might be elk — elk was what we'd been expecting at this elevation, in this park — but the silhouettes weren't quite right, and we were pretty sure pretty quickly. They were smaller than some of the moose we've seen back in New England, but moose.

Back down in Estes Park we ate lunch at Cafe de Pho Thai — gluten-free Thai food that genuinely worked. Jacqui hit the post office and bought postcards and stamps. She wanted to send some.

From Estes we drove south through Boulder — a deliberate routing to dodge the I-25 / Northwest Parkway tolls — and on to Denver International. Murphy gas, Caribou for Jacqui, Chick-Fil-A and the Flight Stop kiosk to burn off the last of the trip-budget snacks. We dropped the Turo at the rental return in Aurora a little before 8 PM and queued up for the shuttle back to the terminal.

The kids had been collecting state license plates the whole trip. As I was the last one onto the shuttle, I noticed the car we'd parked next to had Alaska plates. The woman who owned it was on the shuttle — a young woman, very nice, who told us about her work: she travels in three-month rotations to different parts of the country. She was on her way to Alaska first — heading home for a visit — and from there she'd come back to Colorado and then drive east to Massachusetts for the summer. The whole family ended up in an easy conversation with her on the ride to the terminal.

JetBlue 0994 was delayed. We'd gotten to the airport a little too early, given how light traffic was, but eventually we boarded a full flight. Edrik slept. Sierra slept. I slept. Jacqui didn't sleep well. We landed at Logan in the small hours of the morning. Sierra and I took a cab straight from the airport to her basketball tournament in Boston. Our neighbor brought us home from there.

Eight days, 1,408 miles, six national parks and monuments, and two personal-history detours that bookended the rest. Home.