Second "vacation" of 2024

Indisputably our second stab at taking time off this year was more successful than the first. I hardly answered any slack messages and didn't even write a line of code. That said, attempting a vacation between back-to-back IVF cycles was probably overly ambitious. To our credit, when we converted our Amtrak credits into our first trip to Colorado, we never imagined what our fertility journey had in store.

We landed back home a full week ago and I honestly don't have the energy to do much more than tell a story in pictures. We did a lot. I worried a lot. And I didn't fully absorb the good news that arrived a week ago today as we sat in the airport, en route home, and learned that we had reached our minimum threshold for making our future family.

Here's the best I can give right now at telling the story of a few days where we had a change of pace.

Things started off scenic with our overnight train to Colorado. I can't recommend highly enough the upgrade to the sleeper car that we thankfully splurged for. However, my anxiety levels weren't aided when, before even making it to our destination, I found myself texting photos of Lily for "lost dog" posters after she ran away. One four-lane highway crossing and several hours later, a kind stranger returned her to our dogsitter and I tried to remember to breathe.

We made it to Glenwood Springs and our first taste of summer weather! The town kicked off its 127th annual Strawberry Days Festival right when we arrived.

We were up early the next morning for the first activity on our agenda: paragliding! Sadly, I learned that my stomach is just a wimp. Even with a fabulous pilot who took seriously my ask that we have a smooth ride, the rises and dips just left me feeling a little queasy for an hour or so after the ride. Nicolas, I'm proud to report, isn't nearly such a weakling.

Item 2 on the agenda was actually both the scariest and the coolest: the caving "wild tour". They weren't kidding when they said there was a chest size limit of 42". We shimmied and squirmed our way through passages whose mere discovery amazed me, while I thanked the stars that Colorado isn't on a fault line and admired the heck out of the mom on our tour taking her 11-year-old adventuring for his birthday.

After proving to myself that I could be brave both above and underground, we took the gondola back down and spent the evening in some (overcrowded) hot springs. The pools were all designed to mimic mineral compositions of various springs around the world and, what do you know, I settled on Iceland's Blue Lagoon (which we've previously visited) as my top pick!

Nicolas, who's prepping for his big hike in the Alps in a month, convinced me to brave the heat and we even got some nice shots as we explored Boulder. I'm not sure just when I became a total princess, but it seems I've built a taste for the tastier parts of vacations.

Between hikes, we rewarded ourselves with lunch at the most fabulous university dive bar. It completely tickled my fancy with its MIT East Campus/Senior House vibes and had a great beer selection too!

We dodged the rain post afternoon-hike at Boulder's teahouse, created to celebrate its sister city status with a city on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

And just like that, it was basta - enough. We'd spent two and a half of our five vacation days in transit, so perhaps this wasn't the most well-planned trip, but we'd squeezed in a lot. We capped it off with a trip to Basta, a Michelin bib gourmand rated restaurant where I ate probably twice as much pizza as I'd needed. And that was it. Vacation numero dos was in the books.