Adventure in the Mile High City!

I'll post pictures when I get back because right now they are upstairs, and I am downstairs, and the elevators take eternal amounts of time. So they will have to wait. I'm just proud that I have taken pictures period. I need to take more.

But truly this has been an adventure. It all began yesterday at 1:30, we left beautiful Alpine Valley Care Center so gently situated on Alpine Dr in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Little did we know we were about to have the drive of a century and experience every type of season possible within ten hours.

We took the route through Price and weather was pretty good. It was overcast and a little sprinkle would happen here and there, but nothing we couldn't handle. Every now and then though, we would drive right through a heavy pour, it was like we were swerving in and out of a nasty storm. It was pouring so hard we could hardly see out of the windshield. Well upward and onward we continued, and pretty soon the storm was constant. Not so bad that we couldn't see, but constant so that our wipers had to be on almost full speed. That started about five pm.

It was about the time that I started to drive actually. We headed ourselves into the canyons of the Colorado mountains and there were sooooo many huge puddles of water. We were definitely hydroplaning in different spots. There was one point where the road had nasty potholes in it. A little Toyota red truck was in front of us and hit a pothole so hard, he lost control of his car for a minute swerving back and forth as his car hydroplaned for a good fifteen, twenty feet. For a moment I thought we were going to slam straight into him.

It would have been a not so happy experience if that were to happen...I'm grateful for the gentle whisper of the Spirit that prompted peace and what I should do. Thank goodness all was well.

We stopped for dinner at a small diner in Eagle, Colorado. Wow, what an experience! They were out of half of their main courses and our waitress talked very loudly and with a slow ...stringy? voice. I'll have to imitate it for you if you want, just ask. It was a true 50's diner though decked in awesome fashion. Besides that fact that they took forever to get our food, forgot one of my co-workers' order, didn't have a lot of the food, and the waitress' voice, I recommend the stop.

We continued our trip through the mountains, the rain never stopping, except for when it turned into a crazy snow storm. We could barely see twenty feet ahead of us. Since when does it blizzard in June????

We finally arrived and got situated in our hotel at about eleven, oh happy day.

The purpose of my visit is the most wonderful Eden Alternative Annual Conference. In short, the Eden Alternative is an approach to long-term care that is devoted to proactively fighting against the plagues of helplessness, boredom, and loneliness that are so common among those that are aging. In some ways, I feel like these people are a little fanatic about something that seems so much like human nature, to treat our wonderful wise sages of the world in a respectful loving way, but you'd be surprised how many of them are treated. There is much culture change being attempted in the field of long-term care. So...that's why I am here. (there are some real um...you could say tree hugger type folks here, bless their hearts(that's why I changed my background of my blog. Eden is represented by trees and stuff I guess))

Today we toured three homes in the area that were (maybe they weren't because one of them reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally was a sad place to be) supposed to be examples of good Eden transformed homes. I've met a lot of interesting people from all over the world today, and had the opportunity to talk about things that only those that work in long-term care really understand and problems and solutions. So it's been neat. But by far my FAVORITE part has been meeting my new friends. I LOVE OLD PEOPLE!!! From Dora from Buenos Aires, to Bea, and Sid (I'm now his sugar for the day), and Miranda, and Goodam (a Norwegian name of a lady I met), and Joy, and Vivian. My favorite thing is looking into their eyes. I love seeing them as my brothers and sisters. It's soooooo awesome.

So the next two days will be full of classes, which should be good to learn from others' experiences. And then a drive home....I hope the weather is more happy then.