Lewis and Clark, the Lost Episodes, Part XXII.V

My dear son, a.k.a. Help Desk, Tech Support and Mr. Google Earth, tried to put together a Google Map for me to post that showed the path we took trying to find the hospital. He spent quite a bit of time on it and finally threw up his hands in disgust because they would only let him plot out 10 stops. We had many, many, many, many, many, many, many more than that. Hence I will just attempt to explain it to you.

Here's how it went. Kay had been to Children's Hospital several times for varying reasons. I imagine she will mention it on her blog (which you really must check out) some day, so I won't talk about it here. Anyway, she had been to that location many times and thought she had a pretty good idea how to get there.

We drove down um, er, well, "I Don't Know Street" and then turned on to "What the Heck Avenue". We followed that for several miles until we came to "The Street Named after a President". Kay said to turn "right", which I did, however, apparently her right and my right are two different directions, so I had to make the loop around again. I turned left (a.k.a. Kay's right) and we followed "The Street Named after Yet Another President" until we came to…..drum roll please….THE HOSPITAL!

We were home free! We had directions, sent to us by the kind folks at the hospital, which would take us directly to the hotel! I can tell you, we were feeling pretty confident at this point. Giggling and laughing, we said things like "all roads lead to the hotel" and "nothing but net" (I did mention we were exhausted at this point, didn't I?).

We circled the hospital looking for High Street; no success. We tried it from a different direction, still nothing. We went one more time around the hospital and still nada (by that time I was starting to think that whoever put the map together was probably high).

Around and around and around we went, searching "high" and low for High Street. Every time we passed the entrance to the hospital I'd say "Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament", giggling uncontrollably (did I mention that I get extremely silly when I’m tired?). By about the tenth pass I was nearly hysterical, and I'm pretty sure Kay was concerned for my mental health. She kept muttering something about the psych ward...

We finally abandoned the map altogether and (men, cover your eyes and ears here, I don’t want to offend your sensibilities) decided to ask for directions. We saw a very friendly looking woman talking on her cell phone in front of a house a few blocks from Parliament (see, it still cracks me up). She was very friendly and gave us directions to the hotel, which was about 5 miles away. She said to take a right at the next intersection and follow that street to Quebec Street.

Woohoo!! We were “on the road again”.

We took the appropriate turn and started driving. The very nice blonde woman said we couldn’t miss Quebec Street. We drove and we drove and we drove and we….well you get the picture. No Quebec Street. Eventually we came to Lafayette Street and Kay got very excited. “See,” she said, “we are in the French section now, Quebec should be right up here!” I got the giggles again. About 5 miles later, give or take, we abandoned yet another plan.

We finally called the Help Desk (my son) again for assistance. We told him our current location and he mapquested a route to the hotel for us. I was weak from a mixture of laughter and exhaustion, but finally, the Red Lion Central Denver came into view! We rubbed our hands in anticipation. I kept saying over and over, “The Holy Grail is within our grasp.” Kay giggled in delight.

And then the Grail slipped through our fingers. We missed the d&mn turnoff to the hotel and ended up on an off-ramp to I-70!

ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!

I won’t bore you with any more of our lost adventures. To sum it up, we called the boy cousins and they HAD found the hotel and were already settled in. We called my son, yet again, for directions to his house, and he suggested we meet him at his work instead. We (and I know this is going to shock you) missed the turn to his work and called him from a shopping center. Fortunately, he was just getting off of work and met us there. He took us out to dinner at a Chinese Restaurant in the shopping mall. I went to use the rest room, turned the wrong way coming out and ended up in the kitchen.

After dinner, my son had us follow him to his apartment.