{"id":29586,"date":"2024-10-03T11:19:29","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T16:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=29586"},"modified":"2024-10-03T11:19:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T16:19:29","slug":"its-been-a-wonderful-22-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=29586","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Been a Wonderful 22 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can you believe that Brian and I have been together for a quarter of a century? Neither can I. When we first met in 1999, I had no idea we would be here in 2024. It\u2019s been (and continues to be) an amazing ride.<\/p>\n<p>While we\u2019ve been together for 25 years, we\u2019ve only been married for 22. For our anniversary this year, we decided to go to Colorado. Why? First, Brian doesn\u2019t really like leaving the United States so while my first choice would have been to travel somewhere exotic that\u2019s not really Brian\u2019s jam. Second, we wanted to visit Garden of the Gods because neither of us had been there since we were young (or so we thought). <\/p>\n<p>You know you\u2019re getting old when you start forgetting shit. We were so excited to go on this trip because we thought we had never been. I don\u2019t know if Brian knew it all along and just didn\u2019t want to let on because he didn\u2019t want me to veto the idea. On the trip up, things started looking familiar (mostly to Brian because I can\u2019t remember anything). While we\u2019re pulling into the hotel parking lot, Brian makes a comment about how we\u2019d stayed there before. I just chalked it up to all Hyatt Place hotels looking the same but Brian was convinced we\u2019d been here. To settle the debate, I looked up my emails from years past and, lo and behold, sure as shit, I had a receipt from that same hotel from three years before. I guess we had stayed there for the Great Plains Regional Tournament at Monument Valley Park in 2021. I felt sure that we stayed closer to the tournament venue but I guess not. <\/p>\n<p>Looking back, we probably picked this hotel because of its proximity to Garden of the Gods and we figured that we could check out the park on my non-playing days, which we actually did and I had just forgotten about it.<\/p>\n<p>I looked up past blog posts and here\u2019s what happened \u2013 it started raining on the day we went to check out Garden of the Gods so we took a picture in front of balanced rock and then we spent the rest of the time having lunch at the Trading Post because we didn\u2019t want to risk walking\/climbing on the wet, potentially slippery rocks. Since we didn\u2019t really spend a lot of time there and didn\u2019t get to do much exploring, I guess the visit didn\u2019t register and completely got erased from memory. This recent trip turned out to be our do-over.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Garden of the Gods Trolley Tour\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1Z21bw2PxZ4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Brian isn&#8217;t really much of a hiker. Actually, he doesn&#8217;t care much for walking. So when we were at Garden of the God, we decided to take the trolley tour. I found it amusing because it was the two of us and a bunch of old people. By old people, I mean people way older than us &#8212; because I suppose now that we&#8217;re around 50 we technically fall under &#8220;old people&#8221; category as well.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at the other people who seemed to have difficulty walking and such and I felt like the two of us really should have walked\/hiked instead of taking the trolley. But, hey, it&#8217;s a park donation.<\/p>\n<p>After the fact, we did the free, self-paced, guided audio tour of Garden of the Gods in the <a href=\"https:\/\/travelstorys.com\/\"  rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Travel Storys<\/a> app which turned out way better than the trolley tour. First, because you can stop at the various parking lots strategically placed throughout the park to do some exploring and then, as soon as you get in the car and start moving again, the guided tour just picks back up where it left off. You really couldn&#8217;t get off the trolley so you were just stuck there. And second, because it is absolutely free. We totally could have saved the $50+ (before tip) that we spent on the trolley tour. Anyway, we just chalked it up to a donation but, if we ever do this again, we are totally skipping the trolley tour and just doing the Travel Storys audio tour instead.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s our Garden of the Gods highlight reel:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Fave Pics from Garden of the Gods\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dvUCAjQbUSw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We also drove to nearby Manitou Springs to check out the Manitou Spring Penny Arcade. They had all sorts of old school games that didn&#8217;t cost hardly anything to play. You could get a $5 roll of quarters and be entertained for hours.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Manitou Springs\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ipXOAonCt20?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Hands down my most favorite part of this trip was our visit to the <a href=\"https:\/\/meowwolf.com\/visit\/denver\"  rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Convergence Station<\/a> (aka <a href=\"https:\/\/meowwolf.com\/visit\/denver\"  rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meow Wolf &#8211; Denver<\/a>). I am officially obsessed and want to see all of the <a href=\"https:\/\/meowwolf.com\/\"  rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meow Wolf<\/a> exhibits all over the nation.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Meow Wolf - Denver\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cQzivdp1NWE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Brian and I also got to drive through the Glen Eyrie Castle property. You&#8217;re not allowed in the castle unless you have an appointment so these highlights are all we got.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Glen Eyrie Castle (Short Version)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S0dDuICEkSE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The most underwhelming activity of this trip was the Ghost Town Museum, which I thought would be more like Old Cowtown Museum but sadly it wasn&#8217;t anywhere close. I joked to Brian that I can see why it&#8217;s a &#8220;Ghost Town.&#8221; LOL.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ghost Town Museum\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hr_Y0bEV-d0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this was a great anniversary trip. I&#8217;m glad we got to go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can you believe that Brian and I have been together for a quarter of a century? Neither can I. When we first met in 1999, I had no idea we would be here in 2024. It\u2019s been (and continues to be) an amazing ride. While we\u2019ve been together for 25 years, we\u2019ve only been married [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,1690,21],"tags":[116,850,2488],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29586"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29594,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29586\/revisions\/29594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}