The beauty of vacation

“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."   ---Mark Twain

Two weeks ago I was hiking to this:

Drinking cold, fruity, adult beverages:

Stopping to admire the view of these:

Keeping my eyes peeled for some of these:

And spending my days with my two favorite people:

Our little family holiday was lovely, and by the time we reached Santa Fe I felt fully recharged. However, from the minute we returned my life has chaotic, intense, and stressful. But, alas, at least I learned a few take-aways from this vacation:

a) Driving through the desert in August is HOT. HOT. HOT.

b) Hands down, New Mexico has the best food in the US of A. They put green chilies and red sauce on everything.

c) I should not attempt mountain biking until I’ve had my morning coffee.

We left on a Friday afternoon and headed for Las Vegas to visit family (not to mention, take advantage of free room & board), before we drove, quite literally, through the middle of nowhere-ville Utah, to Arches National Park where we spent the next two days leisurely melting in the hot sun while we hiked around with a 15-pound weight on our shoulders.

It should be noted, by the way, that in order to recover from our day and a half of hiking through Arches National Park, we spent the next few days doing much of this:

And I now have memorized Caps for sale: A tale of a peddler, some monkeys and their monkey business. (Don’t worry, lest you think I am some sort of memorizing genius; it’s a 6-page rhyming board book.)

By the end of our week we managed to do a little of everything – hiking, shopping, sights, eating, lots of driving – and we spent our evenings drinking margaritas on our patio while watching lightning bolts dance across the sky; counting the seconds in-between for thunder. There is little I love more in life than a good summer thunderstorm: the smell of the rain, the beauty of the lightening, and the cool, quiet blues that follow the storm’s wakes.

 

I planned to take pictures of my Santa Fe, uh souvenir and parade it about the Internet – and by souvenir, I mean the cowboy hat that I drug J and Daisy all over Santa Fe trying to procure, but instead I find that I have papers to grade, a car battery to fix, and library books to return. Thanks for raining on my parade, real life! I can post more pictures of our Southwest trip and jaunt to Minnesota though, if you’re interested. But unless you’re one of my parents, one of J’s parents, or a member of the Taos Tourism Board, I’m not entirely sure you will be.