Trout

I don’t know whether all boys love to fish or just ours. More accurately, our boys love the idea of fishing. They all have tackle boxes and they spend an enormous amount of time arranging and trading their lures. Despite having fished three times this trip, we have about 2 inches of fish to show for it. In the Tetons, we did see two trout under a bridge on a river that occupied the kids for nearly an hour of unsuccessful casting. That ended with Zachary wading in the creek with sharp stick. Unfortunately, that only works for Bear Grylls.

After Dinosaur National Monument, we hightailed it to Rocky Mountain National Park where we spent two nights. On the first day, we took the RV to the top of the Park at over 12,000 feet where we snapped a promising Christmas card candidate. This picture also proves, that, at elevation, my hair is lighter than air.

The next day was a travel day where we re-supplied and headed to our next destination. On travel days we shower, go grocery shopping, do laundry, find Internet access, get gas, and get moving. For this day, we recharged in Estes Park, Colorado. In Estes, we discovered the world’s most brilliant business plan, assuming the rest of the world’s pre-adolescent boys behave as ours do.

Estes is home to Trout Haven, a man-made pond that is so stocked with rainbow trout you could walk across it without getting your feet wet. They supply poles, tackle, lures, worms, and minimum wage teen-age labor to gut and clean your fish. They charge $.95 per inch of fish caught. I could drag a Cheeto across the pond and catch a fish. It is impossible to not catch fish at Trout Haven.

Admittedly, Trout Haven does not provide the healthiest living conditions for rainbow trout. Some looked a little pale around the gills, so to speak. There were a few that were swimming upside down. However, after promising real fish to our kids, I would have fought through a full PETA battalion plus celebrity activists.

The results were astounding. Zach caught 3 fish. Quin caught 3 fish. Even Sawyer caught two fish on his SpongeBob rod and reel. The largest fish was 16” long. We caught over 10 feet of fish. Brilliant business plan. The pictures speak for themselves. We ate 2 feet of the fish tonight.

After Trout Haven, we drove until 3 in the morning to Mahoney State Park about 25 miles east of Lincoln Nebraska. Our other stops have had picturesque scenery to attract visitors. Because it is impossible to choose a part of Nebraska that is park-worthy over any other part of Nebraska, Nebraska’s state park philosophy is to declare an area a park and then build a state-sponsored resort around it. So, Mahoney rocks! It has two fishing and boating lakes, one swimming pool with water slides, a conference center, an observation tower, bike paths, and many other amenities.

In other news, Sawyer removed his training wheels for the first time in Rocky Mountain National Park. He did great, as long as he doesn’t need to start, which sort of prohibits stopping, which is a little problematic. We’re working on it.

Lastly, for those following my ongoing facial hair experience (which should really be its own separate blog), I jumped to level four of beard evolution by creating the lamb chop/fu-manchu combo. However, every time I looked at it in the RV mirror I couldn’t help but think that it looked like I had picked up a hair fungus with an eerily symmetrical manifestation. So, the lamb chops were removed leaving only the goatee. In the interest of science, below is the only documentation of the lamb chops.

That’s all from Nebraska. We have 725 miles to Howell Michigan and 3 days in which to do it. I think we’ll re-cross the Mississippi tomorrow. Peace out.