We're Back in Kansas, Toto

2019-10-09 (Wednesday)

As exquisite a day for scenery as yesterday was, that's how bland today was. It's a bit of a difficult transition to drive from Colorado to Kansas, and that's just the truth.

We had a good night at the Walmart lot in La Junta, Colorado, and woke up expecting to get a pretty early start. We WOULD have gotten out before 9:30 (that's early for us!), but I noticed after I walked the dog that I couldn't find my phone. Joe was helping a neighbor--an older woman on her own in a large RV who couldn't get her generator to start, and I was cleaning up our RV, and then I realized I didn't see my phone.

I had actually thought I'd taken it out with me when I took Cassie out, maybe 30 minutes earlier, and I realized before the walk was finished that I didn't have it. I assumed I hadn't really taken it-- I mean, it would have been in my shirt pocket, which is hard to lose something. But I got Joe to come help me, and we spent an hour searching for the phone both in the RV and combing the area where I'd walked. The Life 360 app on the phone said it was still where we were, but we were stymied. After an hour, I went into the Walmart to ask if by chance, someone had found a phone. It seemed like a long shot, but.... YES! They had my phone! So I guess miracles CAN happen.

After that, we got going pretty quickly, but it was already something like 11:00ish. The roads in the eastern park of Colorado are not very fascinating, although the southeast corner where we were today sure beat the I-70 corridor we took last year, which we thought was pretty much unsurpassed for drabness. At least we passed through some small towns.

Just at the state border, there was a rest area, and we stopped there for lunch. We were also happy that they had a dump, because we'd felt perhaps we needed that particular facility. So it was a reasonable stop, except I was somewhat in despair that we were still not even out of Colorado, and it was about 2pm when we left the rest area.

Luckily, the rest of today's drive was less dilatory. The only issue was the significant wind we encountered in Kansas a bit before Dodge City, through tonight when we stopped at Pratt, Kansas's Walmart. (Joe says one thing he likes about this campground is "No quiet hours," ha ha!!) Anyway, I drove the last 80 miles, I think, and the wind was something not fun to deal with. The road was a 65mph road, but that was too fast to drive; I stuck to about 60 instead.

We got to Walmart just at sundown, having made 299 miles (our goal for the day is 250-300 miles.) We had dinner, and I thought we had a long evening ahead, but we just figured out, we are now in the Central Time Zone. So we are only one hour behind home now! Oh, we did have to leave US-50, our road since Reno; US-50 wants to join up with an interstate highway soon, and we'd like to avoid that as long as possible. So we plan one more day on the "blue highways."

No photos today--I was driving a lot, and there was really nothing exciting to photograph. We did note the fields of sorghum, which were impressive, but otherwise nothing really exciting. We were beside the Arkansas River all day, but it seems to peter out in Kansas, and the bed was pretty dry a lot of the time. So... no scenery. It's just Kansas. As we passed through a small town somewhere, there was a sign at the far end of town: "I'd turn back if I were you!" We laughed, but besides that fact that that's an OZ warning, and we were still in Kansas, it's no joke. If we could turn back to Colorado, we just might do that! Except, I have to admit, I miss my babies! So Eastward Ho tomorrow!

Colorado US-50

Along the Gunnison River

2019-10-08 (Tuesday)

We woke up to an exquisite morning at 8,000 feet-- a blue dome of a sky uninterrupted by a single cloud, crisp mountain air, and the colors of fall all around us, reds, yellows, and rusts (plus evergreen, of course.) I guess that was invigorating enough that it got us moving a little ahead of our usual departure time.

The Jeep, of course, was not attached to the RV, so we drove down the mountainside with me leading Joe in Samantha. What we got to see was what we'd missed driving up-- the valley below us spread out in an endless vista. Wow, it was spectacular-- but of course, no one could take a photo, because we were both driving. We got to the bottom quickly (a lot easier than laboring up the mountain yesterday), and I soon found a pullout so we could hook the Jeep back up to the RV. And then we were back on the road again.

We are still following US Route 50, which started out in Reno, became the "Loneliest Highway", and now is not lonely, merely beautiful, through most of central Colorado. We had driven on this road before, back in 2015, and I think I must have taken a lot of the same photos back then! We drove through canyons, and past ranch land, but the most beautiful areas were Blue Mesa Reservoir, and the Arkansas River canyon after the reservoir, to the town of Canyon City. Really, it was a lot of "wows" again. The only problem was, it was pretty slow driving, and we were trying to make our "average" of about 275 miles/day so we get home on time.

Along US 50 in Colorado

 One thing that slowed us down was the Monarch Pass. Some time last night, I remembered that we had gone over it in 2015, and it was HIGH! 11,300+ feet. So we made plans to unhook the Jeep yet again before we headed up the mountain. I have a book for truckers, which describes all the high passes in the western states, so I looked up our route, and Monarch was the only high pass on our trip today. So, using the info from this book, we figured out we needed to stop in the little nothing town of Sargents to unhook, and we could re-attach ourselves someplace around 10 miles down the mountain after we went over the pass. And that is what we did! It all worked very smoothly, but I figure at about 15 minutes per hookup or un-hook, it added almost an hour to our day.

Blue Mesa Reservoir

 In any case, we traveled safely over the mountain, and I took a selfie at the summit to commemorate the event. And from there, we headed through along the Arkansas River, with more oohing and aahing, until suddenly we seemed to be back into traffic! From Canyon City we drove to Pueblo, which is a REAL city, and then, one final hour (I was driving by this time) to La Junta. And we are spending the night in the Walmart parking lot here. It's not a typical Yom Kippur, that is for sure, but we are being truly appreciative of what we are lucky to have, and pondering the coming year with both hope and gratitude. We'll continue to be introspective tomorrow as we head on into Kansas, still following US-50.

Arkansas River Canyon

Walls of Arkansas River Canyon

Me and the Jeep on the Continental Divide, Monarch Pass