About two years ago when my family took our first real vacation, we traveled from our home in Fort Riley, Kansas, to the middle of Colorado. We three kids were teens by this time, and that trip was the last one we took before my elder sister Kait went off to college. We were gone for two or three weeks at the end of August, and we had an awesome time.
After camping in Colorado Springs for about a week, we went up north to camp at a KOA campground in Estes Park. You know what I’m talking about– the 20 by 25 foot lot with the nearest bathroom and communal showers a five minute walk away. Our particular lot was a hedge of bushes away from the highway and downwind from the horse stables. We had a firepit, but with the contantly shifting wind, you always had the smoke in your eyes. The nights got pretty cold; one night it was about forty-five degrees. But none of this was enough to dampen our spirits as we spent time together.
One day, we decided to take a tour of the Invesco football stadium, home of the Denver Broncos, for my Dad and brother’s sake. We spent all day following our guide, gaping at the new stadium, listening to all of the modern amenities and numbers involved with its construction and design.
One of the things that I found pretty cool about the tour was the first stop. There is a room with a bunch of sports uniforms of all kinds: football jerseys and helmets, hockey sticks and gloves, baseball and basketball jerseys. These were for kids (and teens, I hope) to try on and feel like a star. It was a real Kodak moment.
When we and our guide reached the actual field, we found out that we weren’t allowed to stand on it. Composed of grass grown among tufts of Astro Turf, the field was like hallowed ground; we could only touch it. But as you can see in the picture, we got as close as we could get to standing on the grass for the photo. Aside from having “tired dogs” at the end of the day, I felt like we had great fun, just being hick tourists for the day, just as if we had died and gone to Football Heaven.
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