The International Writers Magazine:Colorado

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Glenwood Hot Springs • Kelly Crusty As a Colorado native, I have been to the hot springs more times than I care to remember. Some good, some bad, some downright awful. Like the time I contracted some nasty skin virus on my leg that caused my entire shin to break-out in welts; that wasn’t good. Or the time I peed my pants (or, bathing suit, rather) standing in line for the bathroom; that wasn’t very good, either. Both memories are from my childhood, when family vacations were still novel, and not everybody had something better to be doing or someone else they would rather be spending time with. We would load up the mini-van with a cooler full of string cheese and apple slices, hop on I-70, and head west for one of the most popular family getaways in Colorado, Glenwood Springs.

Glenwood was perfect for our family vacations. The pool was the size of a football field, and though it tasted like salt and smelled like sulfur, it kept us kids busy for hours. Not to mention the water slide – a huge, green, looping swirling tunnel of certain death that dropped you into a pool of chlorinated water below. By 4 p.m., we would be so exhausted, all we needed was a bath, a slice of pizza, and we were out, leaving the grown-ups time to enjoy Glenwood’s peaceful mountain surroundings.

Nighttime is so quiet in little mountain towns, even those with megalopolis swimming pools. No adult can resist relaxing in good company, drinking a glass of wine and listening to the sound of silence. Even with the stress of transporting an entire family, a cooler full of snacks, and an obscene amount of floatation devices up an Interstate, Glenwood Springs was always a welcomed getaway from the city. (Hotel Colorado)

I am the youngest of three, and the last Glenwood trip I remember when all three of us were present was in 1994, right before my sister moved to Alaska. I was hideous. Just awful - a nine-year old girl with a hair-cut like Beatrice Arthur from the Golden Girls in a Speedo – I shudder just thinking of all the poor souls that had to watch me flounder in that big green pool. My brother and sister were far too cool to be seen with me. They didn’t even want to go on the water slide! They just wanted to lay in the sun, listening to the Beastie Boys on their Walkmans. I was left to flounder alone.
The family vacations following our last trip to Glenwood were spent elsewhere; eventually my brother moved out, so it was just my parents and I. We would travel to different cities across the U.S. to watch my dad, an accomplished marathoner, run races. I saw lots of cool things – Arches National Park in Utah, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and the Mall of America in Minnesota. Though my experiences were stimulating, there was always something missing. Nothing compared to the nostalgic days spent floundering in Glenwood’s salty waters.

Fast forward 10 years. I am a 21-year-old college student, about to embark on my last year of school. I have decided (against my better judgment) to move home for the summer, and spend my days nanny-ing for my brother’s 5-year-old son. Since my birthday is in July, it has been routine to have the festivities planned by my mother. The celebratory rituals usually exclude all of my friends, and include every tradition I hate – sugary birthday cakes with a picture of my face on it and dinner at restaurants that are unappetizing, yet easy on the wallet. Simply put, I never have a say in my birthday celebrations.

Imagine my surprise when my mother informed me that we would be celebrating my 22nd birthday in Glenwood Springs. And when I say "we," I mean my parents, my brother, my brother’s son, my sister, her 10-year-old daughter (who loathes me), her 3-year-old daughter (who still breast-feeds in public), and myself.
"Well," I informed her, "that just won’t work." We could not afford lodging, transportation and unappetizing fare for all those people. We would just have to figure something else out.
"Oh, no. Don’t worry," she assured me. "Your father and I are staying at the Hotel Colorado. All of you kids are camping."

I will skip the commute up I-70; it was relatively uneventful. Since my alcoholic brother and I both had to work Friday night, we just drove up separate from the rest of the circus on Saturday morning. I drove, and my brother got drunk.
Three 24 oz. cans of beer later (I was drinking Starbucks), and we had arrived in the land of hot, festering public bodies of water (I still had not forgiven Glenwood for that nasty infection on my leg). My mother had been calling my cell phone the whole drive up. Apparently my dad had gotten wise and gone fly-fishing all morning, leaving her to tend to the 10-and 5-year-olds. My sister and her breast-feeding toddler were M.I.A. Seeing as how my brother was intoxicated and I was my nephew’s primary caretaker, I was left to supervise the two children while my mother went to her hotel room and showered. I was to flounder alone.

The 10-year-old wouldn’t let up on how fat I looked in my bathing suit. The 5-year-old almost drowned twice. All I wanted to do was lie in the sun, attempt to gain any bit of color (I heard it had a slimming effect), and listen to the Beastie Boys on my iPod. By 4 p.m., I was starved, sun-exhausted and downright pissed off. If only I had someone to yell at.

We all ended up together at a restaurant across the river from the pool. I was sunburned and ready for a cocktail. My sister was publicly breast-feeding the 3-year-old. My mother still had not forgiven my father for the fly-fishing incident. Glenwood was somehow not as shiny and appealing as I had remembered. All I wanted to do was go home.
Dinner was a quick-kill. Everybody was so anxious to get it over with, my birthday was completely overlooked. No "surprise" brownie with a candle from the waitress. No clothes that didn’t fit. Not even a, "Happy birthday, Kelly. Thanks for making sure my kid didn’t die today." This was no birthday – this was hell on earth masked as my birthday.

As the sun set on Glenwood, my parents retired to their king-sized bed at the Hotel Colorado. The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves – my sister, who was supposed to have chosen a campsite, must have been too busy nursing the 3-year-old, because she was just as clueless as the rest of us. "I don’t know. Let’s just drive down the road a bit. I’m sure we’ll find something," she said.

It was 11:30 p.m. We had been driving for close to two hours. Every other family in Colorado and Utah and Montana must have decided to camp outside Glenwood that weekend, because every campsite was already occupied. I watched as we passed campsite after campsite. People sat around the fire keeping one another warm and roasting marshmallows, while I wondered, "Why can’t our family be like that?"

Eventually, our front tire got stuck in a wheel rut in the dirt the road. The two school-agers were asleep and the 3-year-old was hungry and crying. Frankly, I felt like I could have been nursed, as well. We rolled out of the car and surrendered to whatever flat piece of land was next to our side show of a vehicle. We set up the tent (kind of), and put the children inside. The night was quiet, and we "adults" were left to take in its splendor. The pitch-black sky was staggering – I had forgotten what the stars and moon looked like without light pollution from Denver. The silence was deafening. The view was breathtaking.

Eventually, I put myself to bed. My brother and sister stayed up late into the night drinking and reminiscing on old times. Who was I kidding? I was no grown-up! I was a mere child compared to these two dinosaurs. I could stay up late drinking whenever I wanted. My brother and sister had real responsibility, and they were going to take advantage of sleeping children and a bottle of gin. I didn’t even hear them lumber into the tent hours later – I was exhausted.
In the morning light, everything looked different. The car was stuck in what turned out to be the tire track of a 4x4 trail, and our "campsite" was set up just below what looked like a jump for off-road vehicles. The tent was a sorry excuse for a shelter, and the air mattress had deflated. As I squatted over a tire track, I pondered all the different ways one could commit suicide in the middle of nowhere.

It wasn’t until we were loading up the car that I realized how badly mistaken I had been about this trip. The children were running around, collecting seed pods and strands of straggly sagebrush. They were laughing, covering themselves in dirt, adding to the mineral residue left by the springs. The land before them was huge – so expansive, it made them look like dwarves. As they giggled and ran, my nephew stopped and looked up at me. With the sincerest of eyes, he said, "Aunt Kelly, this is my favorite day I ever had." My heart stopped beating, my eyes got blurry. I knelt beside him, and squeezed him in my arms. "Me too, buddy. This is my best day, too," I said.

Maybe it was starvation. Maybe it was exhaustion. Either way, when I let go of him, I let go of something else, too. I began bawling; just crying uncontrollably. The sun was barely up, warming the land around me. I watched as it rose over the horizon, and for a brief moment, everything was illuminated.

Driving back down the road from the make-shift campsite, it dawned on me; family vacations are not about where you go and how much money you spend. Glenwood Springs may not be DisneyLand, but my childhood memories disagree. As I grew older, I forgot what it felt like to be young and naïve – when going somewhere new and having an adventure was actually fun. I haven’t been very far from home, but my trips up Glenwood Canyon have taught me a few things: don’t stay in the pool so long it turns on you and gives you an infection; don’t hold it so long you lose it while you’re standing in line; and most importantly, remember to wipe that sour puss off your face, open your eyes, and experience the world from a child’s perspective. Every family vacation is a treasure and an adventure waiting to happen. It’s not about where you go or who you go with, but about what you take with you when you leave.

 © Kelly A. Custy October 2007

kelly.custy at gmail.com

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