From Blogstock cornfields to Colorado hills, plains, and mountains -- Colorado Holiday Part I

The first of three parts of our Colorado Holiday in July, 2008. (Part two) (Part three/TBD) (All Colorado Holiday posts) Mrs. Jim is dipping her pinkie into the Arkansas River. Click on any picture for a large size. Changing the "s800" in its URL Address to "s1600" and clicking "Go" at the end makes it 'super sized.' Yes, I am finally posting the first of two Colorado pictorial travel journals. This one will be travel to meet our friends. We traveled from Blair Nebraska to near Telluride, Colorado. This was done leisurely in two days.

My first picture/view of note on our ride is Linoma Beach on the Platte River before coming into Lincoln. Here us three guys would bring the pickup (Dad's 1950 which I had for my last bit of college and the first dropout days) with coolers, blankets, food, etc, in the back. We would rent a boat, put supplies in, row out and up stream, then just drift for an hour or so. Most times we would do that all over again. Other times, we would just lounge around on the beach and swim a little. This arch was over Interstate Highway I-80, at Kearney, Nebraska I believe. My Nebraska readers might correct me here. Oklahoma does better, they have a McDonald's inside their arch over I-44 (Will Rogers Turnpike) (link) which is billed at the largest McDonald's. Then we had our last Runzas at Ogallala, Nebraska. One for each of us and one for the road. There are four Runza Restaurants in three other states (click for maps).

We bought gas at the last Flying J station (link) in Nebraska for $4.039. I was glad, we wouldn't see gas this cheap until we got back to Texas ($3.87 our first fill-up). I just love the picture of the diesel locomotive smoking up the sky. Notice how God's Mother Nature is just ready to follow and wash it clean again. I had 17 comments about this picture on my other blog (JIM'S LITTLE PHOTO PLACE [link]). In Colorado we would stop and see my cousin, Bud, who lives in Longmont. We had a very nice visit and got to meet his son and DIL whom we had never met before. We reminisced a lot, we seldom get to be together. Bud left Nebraska right after he got home from Korea and made his new home there in Longmont. We drove right through Denver, around the northwest side on I-76 [Colorado - link] again. Denver really isn't all that big, especially for people from Houston and Dallas. The night was spent in Dillon, Colorado, west of Denver a few miles. We got in after dark but had no trouble in this small town. It is modern yet pretty. This is the view we had the next morning looking south from our motel window.

We stay at Comfort Inns a lot. This one in Dillon was a Comfort Suites and should have been better than the Inns. But it wasn't. Oh yes, it was very modern but things ended there. We did not get the room we asked for just minutes before on the 1-800 number. And were told next time to call the motel right away because they 'don't know' what we asked for. The coffee pot handle was broken but made to look alright. It dropped when I picked it up, full of coffee. None of that hot coffee got on anyone but it sure could have. There weren't any 'do not disturb' signs hanging on the door. We always use them because we don't want the cleaning personnel coming in while we are at breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, they had way too few tables for the size of the motel. We had to eat out in the hall with plates on our knees and coffee, juice, and water down on the floor. There were other problems too, just annoyances. We did get in a good mood after checkout but it took a bit of doing. Like having to tell the clerk we didn't use the safe so she could take the charge off. That has become standard with the Comfort line now. We got off the Interstate real soon. We liked the little mining operations (this one is coal) and the abandoned mines and apparatus hanging around. Also had a number of small towns to go through, this one is Leadville. They were tiny and interesting. A few had a traffic light or two. The scenery was nice, we didn't tire of the mountains. Before long we were tagging along with the Arkansas River. That is a busy little river, rafting is a favorite activity on it. We had a couple of more stops before we would be at our friend's home near Telluride. Guess which one was high on our list? Almost last was gas at Montrose. I wasn't used to 85 octane except for the E-Gas but our friend said it works for them like our regular because of the high altitude. That was over 9000 feet above sea level in the 'hills.' Anyway we treated the car nice (it belonged to our friends we were visiting) and put the middle grade in. We called them from Montrose and met them in Ridgway (link). We ate then headed to the ranch for a nice evening of settling in. The next Colorado post will be of our visit with our friends at their ranch.