And We're Off

With my husband due to arrive (flight) in Moab, UT on May 19th, my getting off on our road-trip two days late meant I needed to push hard to get across Kansas and Colorado in just two days!

So, with push-push-push in mind, we hit the road on Thursday, May 17 with Colby, KS as our hoped for overnight destination.  With the kids strapped in, we headed out and managed to get to Oakley, KS - a very small town along I-70 and stayed the night there.  It turned out to be a great place to stop overnight since a map review in the morning showed it was easier to get to Colorado Springs, CO from there than if we'd continued on to Colby.

With Pikes Peak as our target, we hit the road pretty early and within a couple of hours had the mountain in our sights!  Boo and I talked about what it must have been like for pioneers crossing the plains to see the mountains looming large in the distance, with them still so far, yet within sight - how knowing they were ahead must have given them an energized commitment to continue on to reach them.

From the point where we could make out the mountain in the distance, through the haze that still tricked you into thinking it might just be clouds, it took us two hours of driving.  I can't imagine how many days walking that would be!

Friday afternoon we arrived at Pikes Peak and headed to the summit...a tax on our lungs, going up from a couple of thousand feet to over 14,000 in a day!  Boo didn't seem to notice (though I did) - what he did notice was the drastic temperature change - in Manitou Springs it was 82, at the summit it was 39!

After the long drive, we decided to head up to Glenwood Springs, CO - not only was it a good point to get to for driving to Moab, UT the next day, it is home to Glenwood Springs hot spring pool, an incentive that made the ride there worth the trip for all of us given how many hours we'd already been in the car in just the last day!