As I was out hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park today, I met a cute family from Missouri who had just arrived. They are just one of many Midwesterners who make the trek to the Rocky Mountain each summer. As I’m driving the roads around this area, I see countless license plates from Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Texas. It reminds me of the John Muir quote, “The mountains are calling and I must go.” It’s easy to understand why so many from the Midwest would make the journey to Colorado each summer. For most it’s a day’s drive (maybe a little more), the weather is cooler and less humid, and the scenery is stunning. I can relate to this mass invasion as it reminds me of my own childhood growing up in St. Louis, Missouri and the many trips we made to Colorado.
We would pack up the old station wagon, with me and my brother ensconced in the back seat. Before the advent of computers and smart phones, we would play games like the license plate game, where we would try to spot license plates from as many different states as possible. We would also fight over the amount of space in the back seat. Sometimes on our trips to Colorado, we would bring my grandmother who lived back east in Pennsylvania. My grandmother was particularly enamored with Pikes Peak, for some reason, she called it the “Old Dibble” with fondness each time she would speak of it. However, her opinion changed upon driving the road up Pikes Peak — apparently, she wasn’t enamored with twisting, mountain roads. My grandmother, you see, had lived in Pennsylvania for most of her life. When we planned our trip to Colorado, and Mom tried to warn her about the mountain roads, she proudly proclaimed, “Oh, I know all about mountain roads, Bob and I used to drive to the Poconos all the time!” But when we actually drove up Pikes Peak, she was so scared she was literally crouching on the floor boards, shrieking each time we went around a switchback with a drop-off. But somehow we made it to the top, and I still have the picture of the five of us huddled close together, looking cold but intrepid, a rather timid smile on my grandmother’s face.
I think those trips as a kid out to Colorado planted the wanderlust for mountain adventures that led me to living in the mountains, first in the Sierra of California and now in the mountains of Colorado. So as I meet the many visitors from the Midwest, I am reminded of those childhood memories of of our family adventures and the journey that led to making my home here so many years later.
