More of the Estes Park trip

While we were in Estes Park we toured the famous Stanley Hotel.  This is the hotel that was the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining.  And while none of the movie was filmed there, apparently the mini-series was?  I've never seen it.  Actually, I've never seen all of the movie either.  I get too freaked out to watch horror movies.  I have read the book though.

Anyway, no kids under 5 allowed on the tour which means none of our kids could go.  (Not that we'd want to take them anyway.  Who wants a toddler on a haunted hotel tour?)  But all the adults still got to go.  Know how we managed that?  We hired babysitters for the vacation!  That's right, we suckered hired two lovely teenagers that Kirsta knows from church to go with us.  And it was SO NICE to know that you didn't have to be chained to the house if kids were napping/sleeping/you didn't want to take the babies.  The Stanley tour was the only time we left ALL the kids.  For which the babysitters probably thanked their lucky stars.  17 kids total, the oldest two are 6, there's one 5 year old, one 4 year old, and the other 13 are ages 3 and under.  Anyway, they totally earned their money during that couple hours.

So.  Interesting tour, although we didn't see anything supernatural.  You can actually stay in the hotel, (room 217 is the most requested) but it seems like it'd be awfully noisy what with all the tour groups and, you know, ghosts running around.

Oh, another interesting tidbit (if you haven't already stopped reading): even though none of the movie The Shining was filmed here, some of the scenes from Dumb and Dumber were.  Bet you'd never group those two movies together.  So, the tour was fun.  Probably more fun since it was a private tour-- there were enough people in our family to make up a whole tour group.  Things like that are always more fun when it's all people you know.