Father’s Day saw families take to the streets to celebrate their paterfamilias in diverse, sometimes counter-intuitive ways.

Standing outside Cream Bean Berry, James Crowdes and his son, Colin, 7, said they’d had a terrific time.

Colin said they’d observed the holiday by cycling and building a box for his burgeoning collection of rocks.

After sleeping in, Colin gave his dad a wooden airplane and a book about Colorado birds.

Colin said the gifts he presented to his dad were intended to be “enjoyed together.”

In the great intergenerational tradition of self-interested present buying, the Mytko children, Gavin, 7, and Ellen, 5, likewise gave their father, Eric, water guns and a $15 gift certificate to Top That, a downtown frozen yogurt shop.

Eric said he was delighted by the gifts.

“We already used the water guns,” he said.

Beyond material concerns, Gavin said the day had deeper significance.

“I like hanging out with him,” he said.

At Beads and Beyond, Emily Miller said she’d given her father, Paul, of Hesperus, the gifts of “quality time” and “chocolate, his favorite thing in the world.”

Laughing, she said quality time was of course the “most important thing,” while acknowledging it also was the cheapest.

Luckily, she said, the chocolate, while high-quality, was also “pretty inexpensive.”

Elsewhere in the store, Justin Williams waited with his brother-in-law, Chuck Foutz, while his wife, Angela, daughter, Macy, and Foutz’s children, Russell and Renae, perused beads.

The men gamely acknowledged that shopping for jewelry was perhaps not their ideal iteration of Father’s Day.

But, Williams said, “my wife loves beads. And that’s the point: to appreciate your wife and love your children.”

cmcallister@ durangoherald.com