I remember when the first “memory” with Mr. Virgo showed up on Facebook after he died. It slayed me. I couldn’t breathe and the only thing I could think of was, “Now and forever, Facebook will torture me with these. Maybe I won’t be thinking about him dying for like…five minutes…then, BAM! Right in the face!”

It turns out, they were really painful for quite a while, then slowly, slowly, slowly…I could look at them and they’d make me smile like most of the warm memories the FB algorithms deem appropriate to share with me. I don’t get as many Mr. Virgo memories these days. Not sure why. Just the nature of the beast. Sometimes I don’t even look at them. Maybe that’s why. Anyway, the one that showed up last night really brought back a fun, fun memory!

I lived in Colorado for forty years…the last twenty-eight of which were spent in the Roaring Fork Valley for the most part. Glenwood Springs or the surrounding area was home from 1986 to 2014 when I sold my house and took off for West Virginia in my big camper, TOW-Wanda Grande. I came back to see the kids every summer since then, except for last year because of the pandemic. I dragged the camper back every other summer and took the grandkids camping. 

One summer, we camped in the Glenwood Canyon which was totally awesome. We spent time in the Hot Springs Pool and went to the park to hear live music. But the most fun thing we did was visit Glenwood Adventure Park. Located high above the canyon itself, you could actually see some of the rides from our campsite. If the wind was right, you could hear the screams of the tourists as they dared to swing out over the canyon’s edge and peek 1300 feet down into the canyon below. The cars on the interstate looked like toys.

The new roller coaster opened a couple of years before and I couldn’t wait to get the kids up there and have some fun. It’s a fast, FAST ride that is over in around a minute flat. But, Jeez-o-Pete…it was terrifying. I am not ashamed to say I totally wet my pants at about where that arrow is pointing. You are at a high point on the ride when you suddenly drop into a spiral that gets smaller and smaller and faster and faster till it literally feels like time stands still and you think you are surely in another dimension.

We laughed and laughed and laughed on that trip. We left from there and went up to Steamboat Springs and went on a horseback trip and rented a pontoon boat and spent the afternoon fishing and doing crafts out on the lake and visited their hot springs. That was the year before Big decided camping was horrible and she never wanted to do it again….EVER. The next time I wanted to take them, it was just me and Little. 

Maybe she’ll go again with me some day. I sent her a picture of us on that trip with the message. “You had fun….don’t lie!” Her answer? “Yeah.” lol Little will go with me anywhere, I have no doubt. But, someday…someday I want to sit in the woods around the campfire with just me and Big. It can happen!

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“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Proverbs 22:6 ESV