We have been home for several days now, and I have not talked about what we did after going to Oklahoma City yet. What we did immediately after Oklahoma City was head for Wichita, Kansas.
Wichita was a nice distance without leaving the major road, and we knew we'd get there around supper time and then could drive a bit more before looking for a place to stay. What we learned there was that the average life of a BBQ restaurant is less than the age of the information in our GPS. This is something we had pretty much gathered in Chattanooga, but Wichita confirmed it. The first place we tried to find had closed, been replaced by something else, and that had closed. But we did find supper, and did drive a bit more. . .
A bit more than we'd expected to. First, I keyed in the right city name but the wrong state, so we lost close to an hour realizing we were headed the wrong way and reversing that. Then, the place we thought best to stay at had no rooms because the town company had brought a large group in for training that week. We ended up staying at a nice place in McPherson, Kansas.
The next day, we went from McPherson to Lexington, Nebraska. Where we were actually intending to reach was Kearney, Nebraska, but we got further.
We stayed late in McPherson so Jellybean could swim, since we arrived too late for him to swim the night before. And we had a nice, relaxed lunch. And we followed the GPS when it took us off the main road even though it did not seem that the route would be faster unless the back road speed limits were essentially interstate speeds. Let me say that we went through towns on the Kansas-Nebraska border that I don't think will be there in a decade. A couple had already been unincorporated.
We reached Kearney forty minutes before the museum we were heading for closed, and Jennifer decided forty minutes would not be long enough to do the place justice. She was probably right. So instead we ate at Runza, a fast-food restaurant built around a sandwich of loose meat baked into bread. It was good enough that we ate at another the next day. If you ever eat at one, stick with the original runza over the mushroom swiss, which is too salty.
From Kearney we headed west before stopping for the night, and ended up stopping in the town of Lexington, Nebraska. Lexington was clearly a railroad town. The three or four locations where the roads had crossed the switching yard had all been closed and replaced with one vehicle overpass and one pedestrian bridge across the five sets of tracks.
We once again found a place with a pool, and this time at an early enough hour to enjoy it.
The next day we went from Lexington to Fort Collins, Colorado.
From Lexington we went to Sidney, Nebraska. A few of you may recognize Sidney as the home of a Cabela's store -- a very large store. At the independently given recommendations of Jennifer's father and some of her friends, we went there. I learned I could pay more for a not really large boat than I paid for my house, if I wanted, which wasn't as big a surprise to me as to Jennifer since I'd already learned that lesson about cars two decades ago.
Jellybean started off interested in the animals on display around the store, but was no longer much interested by the time we got to the fish. I was surprised, since the fish were still alive and moving. He was dead set on getting a Spiderman fishing rod, though, so he could go fishing with Grandpa. I might have gotten it for him, but Jennifer thought we should wait until Jellybean was with Grandpa and they were ready to go fishing.
From Sidney we headed west into a big rain. We arrived at Fort Collins, Colorado, where a friend of Jennifer's put up with us for a couple of days.
I will stick with not talking much about staying with people, except to note that Carol reminded me very much of Lori. I think we all enjoyed the stay -- probably more so than our hosts, since Jellybean was quite the hand full, and their children were pretty much stuck with him even though they were older.
On Monday, we left Fort Collins and headed west. Colorado -- at least that part of it -- seemed much too closed in for me. To explain it differently, there is no reason why the towns we saw in Colorado east of the Rockies couldn't have spread out a little bit and given themselves some breathing space. But they had postage-stamp sized spaces. I suppose I could have lived happily half an hour outside of town there, kind of the way I pretty much do anyway. But psychologically, the area lacked elbow room.
We went through the city of Estes Park and through Rocky Mountain National Park. Jennifer did not find RMNP as scenic as I did. She said she's more used to that sort of scenery when I mentioned it was the most scenic part of the trip to that point.
From there we went to Steamboat, where we ate in a nice Mexican place. We looked at staying in Steamboat, even though we still had time to drive. But it is a resort town, and therefore more expensive. So we decided to push on to Craig.
Unfortunately, Craig had no rooms available. This is very unfortunate, because it was getting dark, my temper was getting short, Jellybean was bored and behaving badly, and the next reasonably-sized dot on the map was Vernal, Utah. But we pushed on towards Vernal and found a place to stay in Maybelle, Colorado.
Maybelle consisted of a school, a convenience store, a campground, two motels, and a house. I'm sure there were more houses, just not on the main road. Still, we found the Red Rose Motel there, and were very glad that it was. It turned out to be the least expensive place we stayed, and very well maintained. The proprietor made it sound as if the motel survived only because they filled up during hunting season.
Up until this point, I had been pressing for taking three days to get from Fort Collins to home. But the long night hunting for a place to stay -- not the latest that we found one, but the least heartening -- plus the prospect that Utah would also be short on beds, changed my mind. By this time, though, I think Jennifer was believing I was right not to push to be home.
Anyway, from Maybelle we went to Dinosaur National Monument (the Dinosaur, Colorado entrance), then to Vernal, Utah for lunch, then back to Dinosaur National Monument (the Jensen, Utah entrance). The backtracking was necessary because the Colorado entrance was about petroglyphs and scenic drives, and we were more interested in wowing Jellybean with the dinosaur displays.
Blue Mountain -- in the park -- and its surroundings may be more scenic than Rocky Mountain National Park was. Certainly I think I will be going back there with the boys some day.
And yes, we did push on home to Blackfoot that evening, even though we got in very late.
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