Mammoths and Denver Days

Hot Springs, South Dakota to Boulder and then to Denver, Colorado

Distance: 559 kms
Tantrums: lost count - but Jeremy is really sick of us driving!

This is part of a series of posts from our 2011 road trip. See the overview post for links to the other posts.

There was only 1 place to visit today and the rest was a lot of driving so we wanted to start early (and for a change did!). In Hot Springs there is a (still active) dig site for Mammoth bones (see www.mammothsite.com). Back in the 1970s the bones were discovered when the site was being excavated for a housing development. Ruby and I were fascinated with the site. Jeremy liked running around but he really did not want to listen to the tour guide…

The rest of the day was spent driving to Boulder. The driving was relatively easy as most of it was on I-25, but for Jeremy it was getting boring. He had truly had enough of the long drives and really needed entertaining and we had to make 2 unscheduled stops so he could get out of the car. Luckily at the end of the drive we were staying at a friends place and Jeremy immediately took a liking to their backyard!

The next day we had a short trip into Denver. Here Ruby was going to spend 4 1/2 days at a conference on mass spectrometry. Most days Ruby would leave at 8am and we would generally meet her again at 5.30 or 6. For me this time was a small taste of being a stay at home dad (ok in a hotel…where I did not have to cook or clean…well I said it was only a small taste!!).

Generally Jeremy and I would follow Ruby down to breakfast, but we would take a lot longer to eat than Ruby (Jeremy liked to go back for a 2nd or 3rd tub of yogurt). Then we would wander back to our room counting all the floors in the lift (Jeremy was fascinated by the lift and the floor numbers). Jeremy invented a new game to play in hotel, "Exit Signs", which involved pointing at the nearest exit sign and then running to the next one. As the hotel was square we ended up going around 4 or 5 times before getting to our room.

After a short break we would head off for the indoor pool and swim for 30-40 mins (Jeremy had lots of fun in the pool even though I thought it was a bit cold). Following our swim I would give Jeremy a bath and got him dressed for the day. By the time I had a shower it was about lunchtime so we would head off to have lunch. In the afternoon Jeremy usually spent several hours sleeping after which we would walk over to the convention centre and meeting up with Ruby.