By Georgia Osten
We went for a journey this past weekend to a beautiful Destination Wedding, the wedding of our niece. What a beautiful destination it was – Vail, Colorado! Getting there was a bit tedious, as we suspected it would be. We’ve both decided we’re too old and set in our ways for such a trek, but we set out with courage and confidence! We stayed with our daughter and grands in Friendswood, which was closer to the airport and a 5:30 am flight. Uber picked up at 3:45 am and zipped us over to Hobby in plenty of time since, after all, there’s no traffic at that time of the morning anyway.

Security is always a nightmare, but we accomplished that. Well, sort of. They confiscated my Swiss Army Knife. I know, right, I look like I’m going to stab someone … It’s okay, I’ll get another one from The Big Store, no biggie!

Switching planes in Phoenix, I left my husband guarding our carry-on stuff while I went in search of some coffee, yogurt and a bagel. When I came back with my purchases, he was looking frantically for me, it seems boarding had already started and we had missed our “A-46/47,” they had already started “B-Boarding,” but we pushed ourselves in and made it to some pretty decent seats.

In Denver, we picked up our rental car from Avis. I can’t remember what it was, but it was grey and it was a zippy little SUV. I was driving while my husband struggled getting the A/C working, then the emergency flasher went off, so I pulled over while we figured out how to make things right with this little vehicle. We sure as heck didn’t want to go back to Avis to get another car. It’s all good, we managed to square things away and were on our way to Vail.

What a beautiful drive, up and down the mountains, pressing on the pedal to keep an even 65 uphill, and slowing downhill as the speedometer reached 90, sometimes 100.

We saw wildlife on the way and huge Blue Spruce Christmas trees, brooks flowing down the mountains and lakes that made you want to pull out your fishing poles.

The Marriott welcomed us, thankfully having our room ready for us two hours early.

The wedding was beautiful. One of the main reasons for going was because our son was the Marriage Officiant. Bright and ever so witty, he married the young couple, bringing a tear to a few, including his Mom. What’s a Mom to do?

An elegant dinner was served to over 130 people, wine and Coors flowed, and the band lit up the venue. The Bride and Father of the Bride danced to My Girl!. Everybody danced, especially my Sisters-in-Law and a nephew – the dance floor cleared in self-defense. The ladies became a bit disheveled, as you would expect, after all, we’re “beach people,” that’s the way “Crystal Beachers” are!

As would have it, our 3am wakening caught up with us, but we managed to stick out the party until close to 10 that evening.

Back to Denver the next morning to make our noon “non-stop” flight back to Houston. our daughter picked us up and back to her house to get Maezy, back to the beach, our beloved beach home, normalcy and hot weather.

Happy Trails!

[July-27-2021]