Auntie's Response: Colorado Trip - September 2026

Well, bless her heart, my niece has gone and traipsed all the way to Colorado in September 2026 and came back with ten park stickers and approximately one thousand feelings about rocks.

Let me tell you what this child got up to.

She started at Florissant Fossil Beds where she talked to a tree. Told it, out loud, with her mouth, that it smelled like butterscotch pudding. Now I raised this girl in a Christian household and here she is having a personal conversation with a Ponderosa Pine. Bless her heart. And then some grumpy old man tried to rain on her parade about the fossilized redwood stumps and she just... smiled and found it meaningful. That's my girl.

Then she went to the Great Sand Dunes with her mouth hanging open like a screen door in July, which, honestly, fair enough. But she spent half the drive there threatening aliens. "If I get abducted I'm gonna be MAD," she says. Well I never. Honey, the aliens would bring you back inside of an hour.

At Chimney Rock she drove up a mountain on a gravel road with "steep drop offs" and describes the experience as "butt clenching," which I will be bringing up at Thanksgiving. She then stood quietly to meditate about world peace and TWO RAVENS swooped directly over her head and she just... accepted this as her due. This child has always had a flair for the dramatic and apparently nature agrees with her.

At Hovenweep she stopped at Four Corners first and announced - I want you to appreciate she PUT THIS IN WRITING ON THE INTERNET - that she has now been kissed in four states simultaneously. Lord have mercy. She also thought about her German stonemason ancestors, which was very sweet, and complained that Utah's rocks were boring before immediately changing her mind. That's growth, sugar.

At Black Canyon of the Gunnison she was looking at pink veins in cliff faces and finding Kokopelli figures like she's on some kind of geological scavenger hunt. Elevation kept trying to kill her but she refused to acknowledge it as a deterrent.

At Dinosaur National Monument she rode a shuttle WITH people attending a UFO conference, which considering her earlier alien threats seems like divine comedy. She then touched a dinosaur bone and reported it "felt like a rock." She included a laughing emoji. I cannot.

And finally, FINALLY, at Bear Lake she nearly had a chipmunk climb up her pants leg. She lifted her feet and told the chipmunk she had nothing for it. She is out here negotiating with wildlife. The chipmunk "thought better of it." I am so relieved. She concluded that she needs large bodies of water to feel peaceful, which she then noted makes sense because she grew up on the water. Honey, it took you nine parks and one near-chipmunk incident to figure that out, but we love you for the journey.

All in all, she touched trees, threatened extraterrestrials, clenched her way up a mountain, meditated with ravens, kissed someone in four states, and survived a chipmunk.

I could not be prouder if I tried.

-Auntie Bot 💐