Sohello, today we are bringing you a little something extra that we hope you'lllike.
Acast Creative just launched season 2 of a show called Roundabout presented byNissan.
It's all about roadtrips,relationships, and the memories made along theway, and my wife Stephanie andI, got to take over an episode to share ourstory.
From encounters withaliens,alligators, and so muchmore, stick around to hear the full story of all the oddities that we encounter on theroad.
And if you like thisepisode, subscribe toRoundabout, wherever you get your podcasts for more road tripfun.
I'm Jonathan Fields and I'm herewith...
His wife StephanieFields.
And this isRoundabout, a podcast about roadtrips,relationships, and the memories made along theway.
This is ourstory. We have been marriedfor...
27years. And we've been togetherfor...
32?32?Yeah, I think it's 32years.
A longtime. I've worked together 24-7 because we work togetheralso, so we love each other alot.
We met on a blinddate. Many moonsago, my dearest and oldest best friend went to law school withJonathan.
Many careersago, they got stuck on the Long Island Railroad and ended upchatting.
And at the final end of theirconversation, she asked him if he was dating anyone and she introducedus.
And that's how wemet. It wasn't always love at firstsight.
And this beautifulrollercoaster, it's been more of a rollercoaster and it has continued to grow and blossombeautifully.
But there were little bumps and humps along theway,right?
Yeah, Imean, if it wasn't forthat, literally the train broke down about 100 yards from thestation.
And we had known who each other were because we went to law schooltogether.
We weren't reallyfriendly, but we were just basically sitting on this traincar.
And then the train sat there for threehours, so at some point we werelike, we should probably say hi and start talking to eachother.
But for the factthat, youknow, 32 yearsago, a train brokedown, a 100 yards from the station in LongIsland.
Likethis, this would never havehappened, which is kind ofmind-boggling.
We've taken a lot of different kinds oftrips.
We have a daughteralso, so we'vetraveled.
We've done some long haul travel withher,like, other side of the world type ofthings.
And now we came out toBoulder,Colorado.
What, a little under four years agonow?
No,yeah, we've been here for about three and a half years and we're in New York City for 30years.
So once we gothere, we'relike, we didn't know if we were staying ornot.
So we'relike, it's prettygorgeous.
We should explore a littlebit.
We've been taking a lot of different roadtrips.
Our daughter's inTelluride, Coloradonow, which is about a seven hour journey fromhere.
So we've been in the car quite a bit and trying to discover parts of Colorado that I think most locals don't participate in asmuch.
So it's beenfun. I am the designated driver pretty much anytime we're in the cartogether.
Was it kind of funny because we've never had a conversation aboutthat?
No. And I used to pass out the minute we got into thecar.
And then afterwe... Thatwas, Iguess, a part of the reason why I was taking thedriver.
Right. Youknow, it was thedriver.
And then after we had our daughter for somereason, I wasn't able toreally,like, sleep in the car quite asmuch.
So I tend to take many naps throughout our tripsnow.
Solike, I'll always offer now to drive a littlebit.
But if Idrive, it's maybe like max probably anhour,right?
Yeah.Ish. Which isfun.
And then you don't even want meto.
It's allgood. So this was a roadtrip.
We actually just took about a monthago.
So it's very fresh in ourminds.
We kind of call it the oddities at altitude roadtrip.
And everyone comes to see all the natural wondershere.
And we'relike, I wonder what kind of weird human-made wonders are in this statealso.
So we started our journey leaving fromBoulder.
And where was our first stopagain?
First stop wasCrestown,actually.
So Crestown isthis, it's about a four hourdrive, three and a half hour drive fromhere.
It's in the middle of just this openspace.
It's a town with a population of about 140people.
So it's80-bitty. But it alsohas, it's known as this sort of like deeply kind of a collectic spiritualcenter.
How many different spiritual dishes or religionsthere?
I don't remember if somebody told us around 18 or20.
Right. So there's everything from traditional religions to all sorts of metaphysicalthings, to TibetanBuddhism, to an each one has a little center or shrines that are built that are just kind of like dotted all over this openlandscape.
It's also a dark skysanctuary.
So atnight, there's literally no lightanywhere.
And all you see is like a bazillion stores just twinkling down into themountains.
It was reallyincredible.
We stayed in a pretty weird placealso.
Wedid. It was called the Mother Ship Dome ofChristopolis.
So we go in and there's two domestraight, when you say dome type of structures and inside of it had a lotof, I get a lot of spiritual artifacts and beautifulceilings.
And would you say like how highwould?
Yeah, it was like this geodesic dome made out of woodplanks.
So it was sort oflike, it felt like you were standing in the middle of avortex.
And then outside of the building was this kind of like many open air amphitheater typething.
I guess it was owned by amusician.
Right. There were musicians trying to have different types of performances for rightnow.
They're looking to do performances with kids andstudents.
Right. Next day we just kind of poked aroundtown.
It was reallyinteresting.
Imean, when you go intotown, we went in around dinner time and we're driving through and you have to drivevery, very slowly and part of the reasons because like all of these elk descend on the town at nighttime.
They're literally just walking aroundtown, like eating stuff in thestreets.
And it was sort of like you're just really mixing in with naturethere.
And then the area we were stayingin, it was really sweet because all of the different signage for the street names were peacefulaway, jubilantway, gratefulway.
It was like all ofthese.
Joyfulway, just likegreat, great streetsigns.
And just really I think just made you feel so good where you'reat.
Yeah. And at the sametime, it was like the perfect thing for a Saturday and a liveskit.
And we're on thehighway.
We're driving south and it's like openspace.
And all of asudden, Stephanie islike,wait.
Wait, stop itaround. So I had looked up everything ahead oftime.
And I waslike,okay, this sounds reallyinteresting.
And this could be really cool andquirky.
And we got to thisplace, which is really like aroadside, like a minihut.
Would you say like just like a mini shop where and you put in your $5 into a little container for eachperson.
And then they have a little platform where people would go and say that they've seenUFOs.
Yeah. But Imean, you see it at first because you're driving on the highway in the middle ofnowhere.
And they'relike, all theselittle, like not littleactually, but I would say lifetime figurines ofaliens, but I don't know what the actual life size of an alienis.
And the story behind you remember thestory.
Yeah. So the story behind it is in2020.
So we talked to the guy who was running likethe, youknow, the UFO watchtower, the alien museumthere, which is this tinylittle, itty bitty thing with a very cool sculptureguard, very cool sculptureguard.
All of these aliens as you're walking around and over 24years, thousands and thousands of people just come and left stuff and drapethem.
So they'relike, youknow, green alien figurines with like spaceship type ofsculptures.
Likelights, blades and MartyGrabeads.
And there's all sortsof,yeah, spaceship type ofsculptures.
And the guy who was running it there was the son of the woman who foundit.
She was a waitress working in a truck stop on the highway back in2020.
She'd everynight, these truckers would come in and they'dstop.
And there was our talent stories to each other about how they were seeing things in the sky and all these crazyUFOs.
And she was listening in and shejust, she got her own crazyidea.
And she'slike, what if we take this little piece of land and we just put up a little bit of scaffolding and we basically call it a UFO watchtower.
And then everyone can come climb up to it and literally 24 yearslater, this has become this crazy attraction where so many people havevisited.
And many people didn't say they had said like 25 differentpsychics.
And other people would say that they hadseen.
And the mom hadinterviewed.
The mom haswritten, Ithink, multiple books now interviewing all the different people that have come and seen UFOsthere.
So whatever everybodybelieves,right?
And what they see and what wesee, but when you arethere, it's really cookie and fun and justinteresting, an interesting spot tovisit.
And then right fromthere, we continued our drive and we landed at an alligatorfarm.
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Always securecargo.Now, back to ouradventure.
We literally 10 minutes down there and we'relike, there's a sign for an alligator sanctuary at 8,000 feet in the middle of nowhere inColorado.
So we bumped in and the signs as you're drivingin, the visitors may geteaten.
Do you really have to come at your ownrisk?
The guywho, was he the son of the guy who started or something likethat?
I think itwas,yes, the son his father had started it asa...
Was itTalapia? His dad was a Talapiafarmer, like a fish farmer inFlorida.
For somereason, they moved to this small little open area in Colorado and started raisingTalapia.
Andthen, I guess he said the market changed and then they started wanting Talapiafilets.
So they started doing those and allthe, like whatever the waste product was fromthat.
They didn't know what to do withit.
Sosomehow, they got an alligator and the alligator was just eating all thisstuff.
So it was this great symbioticrelationship.
And then people started hearing that there was this Talapia farm with analligator.
Right. And then people just started bringing inalligators.
There was an 18-foot albino alligator that had been in a whole bunch ofmovies.
Theyhad... Howmany...
they hadlike,what, how many alligators there by the time we werethere?
300 orsomething? There were alot.
Yeah. So there are all these outdoor pens withalligators.
The guy pulls Stephanie over at onepoint.
Andsorry, just telling us stories and then hesaid,oh, did you want to hold analligator?
And there was a cutest baby alligator and they let you holdit.
And it was so soft and it'ssweet.
Ofcourse, youknow, not what you think of with analligator.
And then afterwards we got a certificate of bravery for holding the babygator.
And then the gator crunched our piece of paper to solidify that we had doneit.
And then you're thinking that it'ssweet, but ofcourse,remember, alligators are really harmful anddangerous.
And but they give you pellets so that you can go and feedthem.
And there are a lot of visitors and some ofthem, they're hard for them toeat.
So they're sort of like trying to get to thepellets.
And then at onepoint, we threw some pellets to maybe some of thealligators.
These arealligators. They're behindlike, youknow, maybe in a five foot chain link fence that looks prettyrickety.
And there are signs all oversaying,again, youknow,like, becareful.
Becareful. Be reallycareful.
You may geteaten. And so we step up to one of the fences and there's this big old gatorthat, youknow, so we're throwing some pellets and we want to feedthem.
And then we threw a lot in and they werelike,oh, let's say maybe I'll come close to an all of asudden.
There's one alligator came charging atus.
There's this giant old mad like alligator who's rushing the fence at us and growling andhissing.
It wasscary. And then a boy waslike, allright, we've hadenough.
I think I'm ready to leavenow.
And we'relike,yeah, we basically just backpedaled out of there pretty fast afterthat.
We'relike, we'redead.
But it was an interestingattraction, a great play to havevisited.
It was definitelycool.
And fromthere, that was when we went tocenter,right?
That's where wewent. I had looked up this really cool place that we could stay for the night and it started out as a frontier drivein, which was originally built in1955.
And then they had closed their doors in the80s.
So it was like85. This was literally a drive in movie theater that existed in the middle ofall, like just like miles and miles and miles and miles of farms and stuff likethat.
Andright, I guess it changed hands a couple oftimes.
And then a hospitality group had been broughtin.
Some friends got together and talked about this place about reviving this drive intheater.
And now it's justlike, it's a beautiful looking drivein.
And they also put up glamping yurts and some pretty bougieyurts.
Yeah, like Boho Shiek Yurts with fireplace in the inside and in abeautiful, there's really not a lot of areas that you can go out to eat and so forth in thisneighborhood.
So you can cook and they have like a main sort of diningarea.
And then they had special like pots and pans that you could rent and special cutting boards and knives and other like accoutrements tocooking.
And you could sit in that dining room if you wanted and watch themovie.
And then just the year was socool.
We would have stayedoutside, but it was the temperatureplummeted.
It was freezingout, which I took a pictureof.
I'mlike, is that what I think itis?
And literally like you're seeing a funnel form over this openspace, whichwas, youknow, like Stan hitwork, youknow, we're new here and we grew up basically in NewYork.
We don't see things likethat.
So we'relike,oh, that'sreal.
And that's a littlescary.
Thankfully it was a tiny babyone.
But it wasreally, really cold and superwindy.
And when we got into the year atnight, they were heated by these sort of wood pelletsstoves.
And there were directions on how to use itproperly, which I did not really read orfollow.
So Iwas, and it was freezingoutside.
It was really windy and you hear the wind like pelting the side of thedirt.
We got abed. I'mlike, I figured I had to just like hit the button that makes the stove goon.
So we got a bed and it's like three in themorning, Ithink.
I wakeup, I've apparently thrown my shirt off in the middle of thenight.
I'm like sweating through themattress.
We've basically turned the yard into a sweat lock at thatpoint.
Imean, I wasdefinitely, I'mlike, youup.
She'slike,oh, she'slike, are you hottoo?
I was completely out ofit.
I got up and I wandered over to the stove and I just started hittingbuttons.
And I also remember the one thing I did read and the instruction waslike, only hit the right button because if you hit the wrongone, it'll basically make the whole thinguseless.
So I hit a couple of buttons and it seemed like the stove wentoff.
I'mlike,okay,cool. I can turn it back on for youlater.
So stove isoff. We go back tobed.
I'mlike, and we wake up like an hour later and we'refreezing.
And it'sliterally, Imean, it's still 60 miles an houroutside, pelting theoutside.
It's 33 degrees inside at thispoint.
And we'reshaking. We're chatteringinside.
And then because I think I kindof, youknow, like I glitched thestove, I couldn't figure out a certain facton.
So we're just wrapping ourselves in sheets and blankets for the rest of thenight.
Thankfully,like, the sun came up shortly afterthat.
But it was such a great place to visit andexperience.
It wasreally, really neatthere.
It was supercool. So we woke up the next day and that was our day to go sandsliding.
Yeah. So we drove a couple of miles or a couple actually a couple ofhours, Ithink.
No,no, it wasn't thatright.
Maybe thatnow. It waslike,yeah, it was in 45minutes.
Okay. So there'sthis, there I think it's the highest sand in NorthAmerica.
There'smassive, massive sand is because the valley floor is so open and sovast.
And because they have these incredible winds that blow across it all thetime.
It's very dry and arid in a lot ofit.
The winds that the sand would accumulate from the wind up against the side of the sand go to crystal mountains andover, youknow, a bazillion years it turned into thismassive, massive sanddune.
So there's this like the biggest sand dunes you've ever seenin, youknow,again, at 8,000 footaltitudes, probably closer than 9,000 by time you get to this top of the sanddunes.
And then beautiful mountains rightbehind.
Right.Stunning. Imean, literally you're seeing that and then you're seeing mountains and then you're seeing still snow on themountains, on the tops of the mountains behindit.
So it was prettybreathtaking.
And then you can rent snowboards or guess their sandboards and sleds so that you can climb towards the to the dunes and then glide downthem, which was reallyfun.
I didn't do it quite asgracefully.
I went down and then face planted a fewtimes.
It's a really nice whitepencil.
I did some excellent whitefouts.
The whole goal is even if there was a really cool natural thing we wanted tosee, it was what's the weird human meeting that we can do aroundit.
Soyeah, we got these things and as we're andagain, we're just completely unprepared forthis.
Yes,very. We've got this lead and the sandboard and we don't really know what we're getting into we parked thecar.
And then as we start to head out because you have to walk from the lot and it's a while out to get to thedunes, we were there early enough like Justin's or like the snow meltseason.
So we didn't realize and apparently this is really cool when ithappens.
We got lucky that when if you catch it right in the earlyseason, the snow melt thing down from themountains, it forms a river across the bottom and the front of the sand is which is superfrigid.
Yeah, not a hugeone. So we werelike,oh, I guess we have to cross a river with our sandboard and sled to get to thedunes.
We didn't really count onStephanie, tried to navigate in hersneakers.
That didn't really work sowell.
So I went cross myfeet, got soppingwet.
Eventually took off thesneakers, but I think I was just like walking around that in my socks in therace, sopping withsocks.
Once we gotthere, you have to hikeup.
There's no lift at the Great Sandu in NationalPark.
And it was reallyneat. It's sort of like the combination of like being onsnow, being onwater, and you just pick your different slopes and you set yourself up and you just let itfly.
A little different than being onsnow,right?
Since you're asnowboarder.
Well,yeah. You wipe out and it's prettysandy.
So it was so muchfun. And then eventually we came back in and we were doingthat.
We're totally wrapped up in like hoods with sweatshirts with hoods tied down to protect us from thesand.
We got back to thecar. And that wasit.
I don't know aboutyou, but that was the first time I realized we might have actually not planned the order of things well because we had this was the last stop before we wenthome.
We had a four hour drive back home fromhere.
And we were literallylike.
Reallysandy,yeah, really dirty and sandy going back into thecar.
Right. Imagine your worst beach day like when like every nook and cranny in your body is absolutely wrapped withsand.
And youjust, youknow, you have to drive home withit.
And forthis, this was a four hour drivehome.
I think it was days before all the sand just stopped coming out of like all the different nooks andcrannies.
But it was an amazingtrip.
And now we know parts of Colorado that people friends that we've known here who've lived here all their whole lives have never beento.
I know and a lot of friends have been asking for ourtinderaries.
Yeah, now everyone wants to like ourlist.
They want to repeat thetrip.
Yeah, it wasfun. Now we have to figure out where we're goingnext.
Wedid. And we didn't always travel well together at the verybeginning.
We had a lot ofharp.Terrible, real disasterstrips.
Like really disaster strips actually like not roadtrips, but just badtrips.
Yeah, a lot of really bad ones until like later on you learn to really ask the right questions and see what are your expectations of yourjourney.
Yeah, we learned how to be comfortable and also to go into something like this and talk about it first and sort of figure out what do we want fromthis.
And then just relax into it because you never know exactly what's going to happen yearsago, we were in Bali together with our daughter for amonth, month and ahalf.
And we had the first couple of nightsplanned.
But afterthat,basically, youknow, it was sort oflike,hey, where are we going to go today and then where are we going to sleep tonight for most of the rest of thetrip.
And I think that trip in a certainway, it both broke us and it also taught us that we kind of figured out on thego.
Now that we're at empty nestersofficially, we're trying to find different ways to have fun and to learn and do new thingstogether.
Yeah, this wasactually, we did this at a time where life is incredibly busy for us and the business was incredibly busy forus.
Intheory, onpaper, we had no time to do something likethis.
But I think it reminded us that we have to make time to do things like this because that's really what life'sabout.
It's a good reminder to make sure we're savor allthose, savor all the moments and try to make the most of each ofthem.
And it was really nice just to get out of our regularroutine.
Itwas. This episode of Roundabout was hosted byme, JonathanFields, special thanks to mywife, StephanieFields, for being the best partner along theway.
I also host a podcast called Good Life Project where I talk to guests like ReneeBrown, MatthewMcConney, and No Robbins and more about what it means to live a goodlife, which you can find wherever you're listening to thisshow.
For AcastCreative, Shantay Hal is our executiveproducer.
This episode was reported and written by Arianna Thomas and Shantay Hal withDesign, MusicDirection, and Production Support by EmmaSpellis.
