The Road Home: Part Two

The first night of the road trip, I slept for an hour and a half. Literally. My mind would not rest itself. I was miserable and frustrated and just wanted to shut my mind off before another long day. Didn’t happen. After driving through what seemed like the longest state in the U.S. {Wyoming} it was Southward to Colorado {which didn’t seem much shorter}. Colorado was a state I had never visited before and I was quite excited for it, especially Denver!

The Rockies weren’t quite what I imagined them to be. While they certainly were not as tall and monstrous as I had pictured, they went on for days into the horizon. I’m so glad we chose not to drive straight from Utah into Colorado because that route would have had us driving THROUGH the Rockies. Hmm, no thanks!

As soon as we passed downtown Denver {beautiful city!} we were merging onto another freeway when I heard a noise and saw a sight I will never forget. A pigeon hit the windshield. While this might not have affected all of you, me, being the animal rights activist that I am, hated my life. After the loudest gasp, I hung my head and tears filled my eyes. Go ahead, laugh it up. My dad cheerfully said, “Oh, I saw it fly away! It’s fine!” Moving on…

Twenty minutes or so outside of Denver turns into the middle of nowhere Colorado. There was nothing, and I mean NOTHING to look at. I had no idea that land could be as flat as it was there. The only exits were few and far between. As the sun disappeared for the day, we became tired and hungry {and started missing civilization.} We found a hotel in the smallest town I have ever set foot in. The only place open in town to grab some food was the hotel’s restaurant that was closing in… 8 minutes. We rushed on over there to grab take-out and two of the sweetest guys said they’d gladly take our order, bringing out water and coffee while we waited. Colorado has quite the hospitality!!

Stella surprisingly took a huge liking to the hotel room prancing all around until it was time for her to curl up on the bed with me. At this point, we were racing against Hurricane Irene who was scheduled to strike Virginia on Saturday morning. Needless to say, it was another early morning! We had a complimentary breakfast at the hotel restaurant where we were again treated with great, small town service! Somehow my mind was not awake enough to remember to take any pictures until we reached Kansas…

Kansas was full of these crop duster planes! So much fun to watch them :)

And then the nightmare of the wind turbine farms continues. This had to have been the largest wind farm in the world. Literally. And if it isn’t, I don’t want to know what is. As if driving with opposing traffic coming at you downhill on the other side of some measly cones isn’t bad enough, this wind farm had to be right next to us. They were everywhere for MILES. You could just see their shadowy figures off in the distance. CREEPY. I could write a great horror film about this.

While driving through Kansas, I did a whole lot of staring out the window. These were the thoughts in my mind:

{via}

Tornadoes are probably tied for my #1 fear. I have reoccurring dreams about them and they usually look something like the above picture with tornadoes everywhere. It’s impossible to drive through Kansas looking at the cornfields and not picture a twister. Try it.

When I wasn’t thinking about tornadoes and thanking my lucky stars that it was a cloudless and sunny day and no rain was expected for days {because, yes, I checked ahead of time}, I was actually really enjoying Kansas. It’s a beautiful state with nice people and rest stops all over I-70 :)

One thing I LOVE about driving across the United States is seeing the change in landscape. Kansas was another great example of this. It started off very flat and bare and gradually, the hills and trees started appearing. You can see the cute little city of Topeka below.

We got pretty held up for a while due to a pretty bad accident. I hate coming across those :(

Any KU fans out there??

Seeing the huge UP rail yard in Kansas City was pretty cool for me due to an old job of mine.

That was it for Colorado and Kansas, two states I had never been to before. I was definitely pleasantly surprised with Kansas. Maybe I’d move there some day if it weren’t for the tornadoes… and wind farms ;)

Check back soon for the last leg of the journey home! I still have tons of pictures to share with you :)