Chain Lakes Is For Lovers

Oh, took just the loveliest drive to Chain Lakes on our way to Hailstone Butte (which richly deserves its name, btw). Big sun, big sky, big storm a-brewin'. Very dramatic. Paradise.

And doesn't every Paradise have its resident bad girl? This one did.

While munching on a peanut butter sandwich, the national lunch of Childhood, Kid slowly read aloud the following epigraph etched into the wood right beside where his Superman lunch box was sitting: "Megan Ann was screwed on this table."

And then the questions began. And no answers were forthcoming--I was just so unprepared. I thought I would do the whole "when a mommy loves a daddy" or some such nonsense, or, much more likely, just leave the whole thing to the schools and the Man. So when my angelic child with his pink cheeks and bright eyes wanted to know what had happened to Megan Ann on that table, I was all dry-mouthed and panicky. I actually got up and left, pretending that I just HAD to photograph those wildflowers right that minute, leaving Husband to deal. I am just hung-up enough to have actually cried a little bit.

Sigh. Thanks a LOT, Megan Ann and paramour, for the shards of my baby's babyhood, 7 years on (What? Too soon? Not soon enough? I AM NOT READY FOR THIS!!), that are lying all over the parking lot at the Chain Lakes campground.

I think today is actually the day on which I became fully middle-aged.