Six-Week Toad Trip – Day 5

We got to sleep in a little this morning (7:00 am). WooHoo! The Dwight D Eisenhower Presidential library and museum does not open until 9:00 am. This is our first stop of the day.

On the way into town, we passed several lovely homes! Just about every house we passed was a beautiful two-story gem that I would love to live in!

Breakfast today was an egg, sausage, and cheese omelet. You order an omelet and thing it’s going to look like the ones you order back home. NOPE! The sausage was in a pile in the middle of an egg envelope, with a slice a of American cheese slapped on top! I like my eggs and meat cooked together, with real cheese inside and out. But did I eat some, why yes I did!

At about 9:00 am we wandered across the street to the presidential library and museum. We watched a short video about his life, including the fact that Eisenhower was the commander of the allied forces during WWII. I did not know that!

Did you know that Eisenhower was one of six boys, and that every Sunday, on a rotational basis, two of the boys would leave Sunday School early to go home and prepare Sunday dinner for the family so that mom got the day off?!? Smart woman. AND in her bedroom was her trusty sewing machine!!! We could have been great friends 😁!

Our next stop was the Material Girl’s Quilt Shop. They had some of my favorite fabric line there, The Ghastlies, so of course I bought plenty! And I picked up a few fat quarters for Sid and Sam’s quilt as well!

Then it was back on the road, heading for Kansas City, Missouri. Jim wanted to stop at the Great Overland Train Museum. Funny thing was there were no trains! Just a refurbished train station building with a few photos! Well.. they did have one train 😜.

And then back on the road! Before long we were in Missouri!

We got to Kansas City at about 2:30 pm. We checked in to our hotel and then decided to use our MoviePass cards and get tickets to see Hereditary. It was a pretty awful movie. Don’t waste your time OR money!

From there we went to Smokehouse Barbecue for dinner.

You can’t go to Kansas City and NOT eat barbecue! It smelled delicious! The brisket was tender and the sauce was wonderful.

Jim and I shared this plate. The burnt ends and chicken were yummy. The ribs…not so much 😞! After we ate we went back to the hotel room to relax (it was almost 9:00 pm). I did a little sewing and Jim watched a little YouTube. Can’t wait for tomorrow’s adventure!

Till then…💖

Ronney

Six-Week Road Trip – Day 4

Today started early in Grand Junction, CO. We knew that today was going to be a LOOONG driving day (10+ hours on the road)! But Jim and I take turns driving every couple of hours, so it doesn’t get too bad.

We were picked up, packed up and on the road by 7:00 am! The hotel offered yogurt and hard boiled eggs for breakfast so we took it with us and ate on the road. The journey to Abilene, Kansas takes you through some of the most beautiful landscapes.

As we left Grand Junction, we were surrounded by gorgeous rock formations! It always makes me wonder what was going on during each of the layers of rock in these formations. You know that one or more have dinosaur footprints in them 🦖🦕!

Just a couple of hours later and the scenery totally changes! Lush green mountains, oodles and oodles of trees! Oh, and it smelled so crisp and clean 😌!

For most of the morning we followed one river or another. Something about moving water 💖! Must be because I am a Pisces 🐠!

From here we headed even further up, to Vail, CO. The elevation there is over 10,000 ft! Good thing we were driving and not walking or biking. It probably would have killed us desert dwellers! And the weather was lovely. There was still snow on the mountains!

After ANOTHER couple of hours we hit Denver. Not much to see from the freeway. But a short time later we were amazed at how drastically the scenery had changed! Dry, flat, brown! I guess it makes farming easier though when your land is flat 😜.

Then we hit Kansas, oh flat, green Kansas!

About 15 miles over the border is a town called Goodland. We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Tequilas Mexican Grill that Jim found on Yelp 😘! Jim ordered one cheese enchilada and I ordered the carnitas plate (no surprise) and then we shared my rice and beans! It was so YUMMY!!!

Then back on the road AGAIN–this time it was Abilene, Kansas OR bust! Several hours later we made it!

This was one of the longest driving days we have for the trip. We are both still alive though (as of yesterday)! Here is proof 😜.

Tomorrow we have several fun things planned and no more than 2-3 hours of driving. Day 4 is in the bag!

Till then…💖

Ronney

Six-Week Road Trip – Day 3

We got up bright and early this morning to visit Mesa Verde National Park–home of the formerly called Anasazi people. “Anasazi” means evil people in Navajo, so now they are called ancestral Pueblo People.

It took over an hour to drive to the site. Along the way we stopped and got a great picture of the Palace something (I forgot the whole name 😬).

On to the tour! We met the park ranger here at 9:00 am.

Getting to the site was a fairly easy walk on a paved path. When we got near the site, that’s when the fun began!!! We had to climb up a 30 foot ladder to reach the site.

After we climbed up, we all stood under an overhang (in the shade!) and listened to the park ranger for a few minutes. Did you know…the ancestral Pueblo people were farmers, and that they cleared the tops of the flat mountains and grew their crops there? This means that they had to scale the face of the cliffs every time they need to tend their crops. Crazy!

Their living quarters were usually 6’X6’X6′, storage rooms were much smaller.

The round rooms were their “winter” homes! They would be covered with 2-3 layers of juniper logs and then covered with mortar. They had a rectangular hole in the middle to let out the smoke and to let the people in and out via a ladder.

After this, we had to crawl through a 12′ tunnel and climb up two 15′ ladders. Easy Peasy!

That was the end of our tour so we jumped back in the Explorer and hightailed it to Grand Junction. Well…not exactly hightailed it😜! We took winding mountain roads, which are slow going at best, but it was so beautiful we didn’t mind at all! We stopped along the road and too this picture of the river that runs along the road.

We finally made it to Grand Junction at around 4:30 pm. We checked in to our hotel and then headed over to Olive Garden for dinner. Delicious!!!

The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and sewing/embroidering. Tomorrow is a LONG 10+ hour drive, so the plan is to get a good night’s sleep and hit the road early!

Till then…💖

Ronney

Six-Week Road Trip – Day 2

Before I get started…I meant to post this shot of my Explorer’s odometer from the time we hit the freeway back home!

Now on to day 2. We left the Flamingo hotel about 8:00 am. This is one of our longer travel days so we needed to get an early start!

Our driving goal today is to get to Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez, Colorado. We need to get there before the Visitor Center closes so that we can get tickets for the tour tomorrow 🤞🏻!

To help get our day started, Jim and I opted for Extreme Sausage sandwiches! We did a pretty good job of finishing them off, too. Doesn’t it look delicious?!? We mostly ate the insides as bread still does not work that well for either of us 😩!

We got to eat breakfast at the lake. Well…we ate our breakfast as we drove PAST Lake! Doesn’t it look so peaceful and serene? Oh, if only we had more time😞.

A little while later we crossed over into Arizona. I almost crashed my Explorer trying to get this picture 😬.

And then it was drive, drive, drive! We did few interesting though. At one point we were only about 20 miles from the south end of the Grand Canyon. The scenery here looks similar to the scenery at the Grand Canyon.

A lot of the time it was just wide open spaces. But most of the day was kind of overcast, with little puffy white clouds everywhere. It sure made the sky look really blue–maybe that’s what the sky looks like when there aren’t a bazillion people and their cars living there 🤔!

We passed by Monument Valley. It’s kind of weird to see all these outcroppings of rocks just randomly shooting up out of the ground. It might be an interesting adventure in the future!

Our next point of interest was Four Corners, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all touch. I remember being a kid (maybe 7 or 8) and getting my picture taken with a hand or foot in each of the four states. I don’t think I have aged much over the last 45 years 😜!

Look at us!!! After 29 years, we still have not killer each other. But we have never been six weeks on a road trip before either so…

From here it was about an hour to Cortez, Colorado. Our goal was to make it there before 7:00 pm so we could get tour tickets for tomorrow. We made it with about 20 minutes to spare AND they still had tickets! I am so excited about tomorrow!

Till then…💖

Ronney

Six-Week Road Trip – Day 1

Today starts six weeks of insanity…I mean vacation! Jim and I have a mile long list of places to go and things to see over the next six weeks!

We left home about 1:00 pm today, heading for Las Vegas. Jim got us tickets to see Rod Stewart tonight, so we decided to use Las Vegas as our starting off point for our trip!

Do you ever see things and wonder how or why?!? Just after you pass State Line there are several piles of brightly colored boulders along the freeway. My first question is why? But more important is how? How did they get the boulders stacked on one another! And then how did they get them painted? I would say the stacks are at least 20-25 feet high. This might be one of the things that never gets as answer–you know, like Area 51!!!

You know, over the years Las Vegas has priced itself out of the “quick weekend jaunt” category (in my opinion)! They have hotel fees, resort fees, parking fees! But they didn’t charge us for this photo!

Dinner tonight was at The Cheesecake Factory. I had the steak tacos (forgot to take a pic) and they were delicious!!! Jim had pork belly sliders with fried pickles and they were pretty yummy too!

Our whole reason for stop/starting in Las Vegas was the Rod Stewart concert. Our seats were nosebleed!

But that didn’t matter! Rod gave a pretty good performance and sang a bazillion songs I remember from throughout my life. That old man still has it going on, and the face ain’t bad either😜!

After the concert Jim and I returned to the Flamingo hotel and gambled for an hour or so. We ended up about $15 to the good! THAT rarely happens! Now it’s time for bed. What adventures await us tomorrow???

Till then…💖

Ronney