On the ground in Colorado

Not a book review, but just though I'd let you guys know that we safely made the transfer to our place in Colorado. The intent had been to get here today, but we actually drove straight through from Lubbock yesterday. We planned to have three easy days but - a warning - if you ever plan to stop for the night in Trinidad, Colorado, make other plans. First, the town is all torn up with road work. More importantly, there wasn't a roadside hotel that looked livable without a major hose-down with disinfectant! We decided to go on to the next town -- Walsenberg -- where we were to pick up a back road we use. There was one motel in Walsenberg - a 50s era Best Western. We were tired enough to stop but they actually had no vacancies! At that point, it made more sense to keep going. That's right at 600 miles for the day and we pulled in here about 7:30 - about 11 hours of driving. We were pretty exhausted but, this morning, after a good night's sleep, we're glad we pushed through.

We did continue our efforts to eliminate all cities and major highways from the trip up here. Thanks to a tip from the Davis's, we started using a back road last summer that takes us way around Pueblo - one of the armpits of the world. This trip, we added new back routes that eliminated San Angelo, Big Spring and Amarillo. The back roads are, of course, smaller roads but that was more than made up for by the almost complete lack of traffic. There were stretches were we didn't see another car for a half hour! The routes are a little straighter and without the stoplights of the cities, it probably cut an hour off the trip. When you couple that with some really pretty scenery instead of downtown Amarillo, it was definitely worth the detours. At one point yesterday, we went through a huge wind farm that must have had a 1000 wind turbines. They make for an almost extraterrestial landscape.

So anyway, we're here. Today, of course, we'll spend a good chunk of the day running around to do the startup grocery shopping, try to figure out a way around town with all the summer road closures, hit the cheese and wine store, find where our favorite book store moved to and, of course, hit one of our favorite restaurants. I've already scheduled an A/V guy to visit this afternoon to look at this year's TV changes so the fun begins.

Finally, of course, the reading pace will pick up so you can expect an upsurge in the number of reviews. Once in a while, I'll throw in a weather report (today - sunny with a low in the 30s and a high in the mid-60s), just cause its fun to rub it in. As always, if you're sick of hearing from me, let me know and I'll be happy to take you off the list.