Thursday, August 28, 2014

Heading back to Texas!


After having so much fun with all of our stops on our way to Colorado, Neal spent a little time on our vacation planning stops for the way home.  It really is so nice to break up long drives seeing fun things along the way!

Both of our stops the first day were in Colorado Springs.  First up we headed to the Olympic Training Center for a tour of the facility.  My Olympics-loving girls were super excited!  This facility trains mostly summer athletes and also houses athletes that come and stay for several years as they gear up for whatever Olympics in which they hope to compete.  We even saw some actual Olympic hopefuls working out as well as an Olympic medalist!

This wrestler was in the gym getting ready for an interview before he headed off to a big competition.  He took the time to show us how they use their space to practice.  

We saw several swimmers, but they looked really, really young - but who knows, maybe someday!

Their are these neat pieces all over the grounds - they are silhouettes of actual athletes performing.

This is the actual Olympic medalist we saw

There was a whole group of mens and women's wrestlers in working out in the gym as well.

Go Team USA!

Just a few minutes down the road, we hit up the Money Museum.  We thought we were going to be rushed because we were cutting it close to closing time.  Turns out, our 30 minutes was more than enough!  There was some really cool stuff in there - rare coins, misprinted bills, and coin presses.  There was also a children's section where they girls got to map out all the state quarters.

We headed back to our favorite spot: Raton, New Mexico to stay another night before heading home. Luckily, the AC was working in our room this go round! And the best part was we finally stopped at a DQ for dinner!  Meredith had been waiting all trip for a DQ meal, so we made that happen and we couldn't resist a picture with the DQ ice cream cone outside!
The next day, we stopped just a little while after leaving the hotel at Capulin Volcano National Monument.


We walked down into the middle of the volcano.

The girls, of course, loved finding volcano rocks.

The view overlooking from the top of the volcano.

After leaving Capulin, we made our way back into Texas and finally home sweet home!  Such a fun vacation full of great family memories!

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