Wednesday - Well, that wasn't the best night on a Walmart parking lot. About 1:00 a.m., the sweeper started cleaning the parking lot, very loudly. I thought it was traffic from the highway, but it just kept going and going. And this was not a very heavily-traveled highway when we were on it. Finally, I asked Joe what that was and he said they were cleaning the parking lot, it was the street sweeper or whatever you call it. That went on for a long, long time. So please take note of how clean the parking lot is.
But we were on the move early again, by 7:05. And we were only about a mile or so from beautiful Vail, Colorado!!!
We didn't have any sun this morning, but we could still see some of the fall colors on the mountainsides and we could see the ski slopes.
Then we encountered some fog. The spots in the pictures are not snowflakes -- they are bugs on the windshield -- Joe didn't get that chore taken care of this morning.
But we did have snow on the mountainsides.
These pictures would have been better if the sun was shining on the mountain slopes, but it made for easier driving to have the clouds.
We had two passes over 11,000 feet to climb. We were not making fast miles this morning.
And we went through a few tunnels, a couple were pretty long, maybe a mile long.
We drove through some fog, and could see lots of very low clouds in the valleys (and lots of bugs on the windshield).
Once we cleared the mountains, we hit Denver about 9:00, and there we encountered some rain, but it quit about the time we came out the East side. But that spiced up the drive through Denver a little bit.
Here is downtown Denver, through the rain and distance.
From Denver east, Colorado is very flat, very different from the western part of the state.
We did see some antelope through this plains section, 3 small herds. The second group was on Joe's side and he thought it was sheep at first, but I straightened him out.
We crossed the Kansas state line at 12:45, and we saw one more antelope, all by herself. We are definitely in the grain belt -- we saw big fields of corn, soybeans, sunflower, milo, and hay that had already been cut.
We saw fields of late beans in the low areas, but I would say milo (or sorghum) is the main crop through here, and it makes a really pretty field as it matures - sort of reddish-amber.
We had hoped to see a whole line of combines coming across a field, but the closest we saw was a line of farm equipment, some of it looked like it was ready to go, but maybe not.
We didn't see any more antelope once we got into the farming area, and no deer all day. But we did see several hawks along the road, especially as it got more towards evening. We got in 575 miles today, all Joe again, and got off the road in Junction City at 6:00. I had a plan here, but it didn't work out exactly right. There was a Cracker Barrel at the same exit as the Walmart, and I found a laundromat in town, so I thought we would park at Walmart, eat at Cracker Barrel, then I would do laundry while Joe took a shower back at the RV. Well, we decided to do a drive by on the laundromat so I could come back by myself. And check the hours. So we found one, and it said the doors locked at 8:00, and you had to be done at 10:00. So we decided we should start the washers, then run back to Cracker Barrel, then come back to put the clothes in the dryer. We got the washers started. Then we decided we better wait and get them in the dryer before we left. So we did that. Joe added an extra quarter to the dryers, but as we were getting ready to walk out the door, a lady doing her laundry told us that the doors were already locked (oh, forgot to mention, we lost another hour, and we thought we got here at 6:30 but it was actually 7:30) and she had to let her husband back in when he took a load to their car. So if no one was in here to open the door, you couldn't get back in after 8:00, and after 10:00, it went to automatic lockdown and you couldn't get in or out. So we stayed, got them done and folded and hit the Cracker Barrel about 9:10. Fortunately, they were open until 10:00 so we got our meal.
Then, we went back to the RV, Joe had to wait for his shower until the water heated because we forgot to turn the hot water heater on before we left for the laundromat. I got the clothes put away and went to bed, too tired to do the blog (I'm doing this as we drive down the road across Kansas). And then the parking lot sweeper started up again. They must just do this in the west, we have never run into this before. And those things are loud. At least this was at 10:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 a.m. That went on for about half an hour, sounded like they were coming on in to the RV. Then a helicopter sounded like it was landing on our roof (we are near a military base, we later learned.) Finally, it got quiet. Then a semi pulled in right beside us, I mean RIGHT beside us, on the driving lane side, not the parking side. He must have gotten out to get to get his suitcase out of the back of his truck, but it sounded like he was opening our outside storage boxes, so Joe had to go check that out. Finally, we settled down, and we did et a good night's sleep.
We are making good progress. Got through Colorado today and more than halfway across Kansas. We are still on track to arrive in Vincennes Friday .And we bought 105 gallons of gas today, but the prices in Kansas were better -- $2.449, then $2.189. We hope the price keeps going down the further east we get. It got a little warmer today, 72.
Joe is putting in long, hard days but we are making good progress. If we can continue our early-rising, we should be in good shape to get to Indiana on Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment