Usually, I like attending dinner parties with my parents. But when my mom and dad become too comfortable at a person’s house, disaster strikes like lightning in a rainstorm; one second, everything is fine; the next, there’s a fire.

“Where is this place anyway?” Lala asked as I maneuvered the minivan down a muddy incline west of town. In a sense, my wife and I were traveling back in time. My father had shipped me most of the remaining vinyl records from my youth, and now I had to basically buy back my high school stereo from a guy who, on the phone, sounded a lot like Tommy Chong.

Even though the name of the trail was a tad off-putting, the setting was idyllic: 64 degrees, pale blue skies with wisps of clouds layered across the horizon, and plenty of birdlife along the willow-lined river to spot and miscategorize. All four of us had traveled almost 300 miles south to flee the chilling Santa Fe weather and spend time with each other, away from home improvement projects staring at us like the creepy Geico money stack.