Into the Abyss

STATE VISITED: Arizona

We had to meet our guide at 8:30 am -- awwk!! -- which involved gobbling Honey Nut Cheerios in the room while we packed up everything and checked out. But at 8:35 -- pretty punctual for us -- we were in the lobby of the historic El Tovar Hotel (at right -- wouldn't it have been cool if we could have gotten reservations there?) meeting Elaine from the Grand Canyon Field Institute, who was going to reveal the secrets of the Grand Canyon to us.

Elaine's one of those people who makes round-trip hikes to the canyon floor all the time, but she promised us an easy morning hike -- a mile-and-a-half down the Bright Angel Trail and then back up. The trail was fairly crowded -- it's like the superhighway of the Grand Canyon -- so it was hardly a backwoods experience, but it was enough to get us partway down into the canyon to see what it was like. Going down wasn't bad, but like they say, hiking into the canyon is voluntary, hiking back up is mandatory. And of course, no one in the family but me would admit that they needed to stop and catch their breath. But there were plenty of reasons to pause. Elaine had dozens of stories to tell us about the history of the canyon's development, and could point out all sorts of natural wonders -- we got so much more out of our hike than we would have on our own.

For instance, she identified for us this elk poop on the El Tovar lawn. Can you imagine walking up in the middle of night to go have a pee and looking out your hotel room window to see an elk browsing right there?

On the trail, Elaine explained to us the four forces that formed the Grand Canyon, which you can remember with the acronym DUDE -- D for deposits (the different rock strata piled on top of each other), U for uplift (the heaving up of tectonic plates), D for downflow (the Colorado River carving its way through the rock), and E for erosion (the winds carving the rockface). She identified the various plants we passed; she pointed out these ancient Indian petroglyphs and some petrified rat poop running down the canyon wall.

We were in luck; we had some amazing wildlife encounters. Of course there were the little rock squirrels all over the place -- these guys are about as afraid of humans as the squirrels in Central Park are. We watched one raucous squirrel sitting out on a rock ledge, chirping so loudly we thought it was a bird.

But even better, we ran into this pair of bighorn sheep, standing right beside the trail, so close we could have touched them. They didn't seem in any hurry to get away from us, either. It was incredible close up to see how nimble their tiny flexible hooves are on the rocky surface.

And then, way up above the canyon rim, we saw a California condor riding lazily on the thermals rising from the canyon. (Look really closely; it's that tiny black dot in the sky. And that was using my zoom.) These highly endangered birds were extinct from the canyon for several years and were recently reintroduced, with great success -- there are half a dozen living in the canyon now, feeding on all the carrion they can find. Oh, I'll bet the turkey vultures are pissed off about that.

Once we got back to the top (our hike took about 2 1/2 hours), we had lunch in this historic house, built a century ago for Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, these two early residents of the canyon rim, who ran a business photographing visitors. Their living quarters, furnished with cool Arts & Crafts-style decor, aren't usually open to the public, so that was an excellent perk of the tour.

After lunch, we walked west along the Rim Trail, getting farther away from the main village with all the hotels etc. We hiked some 3 miles along the rim (mostly level, thank god) and it was amazing how the views changed. We could finally see the Colorado River down at the bottom of the canyon, which had been blocked by various mesas before. It was fantastic -- and best of all, there was a shuttle bus waiting at the end to take us back to the hotel area.

We finally said goodbye to Elaine and left the park around 3 pm, heading south for Phoenix. (Originally we were going to stay at the Canyon two nights, but then we realized that the Diamondbacks game tomorrow is a day game, so we needed to get to Phoenix sooner.) Along the way, we took a side trip through the Coconino National Forest and Oak Creek Canyon to see the red rocks of Sedona. They were beautiful all right, especially since we got there late in the afternoon with the setting sun turning them aglow. But I guess after Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon they seemed a little less spectacular.

South of Sedona, there was another hour-plus drive down to Phoenix. The forest disappeared and in its place was scrubby desert, where the prickly pear cactus was sooned joined by saguaro cactus, the classic shape of cactus that little kids love to draw.

We expected to see Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner go whizzing by at any moment.

Bit by bit, the desert turned into the vast Phoenix sprawl. I didn't take a picture because, frankly, you've seen it all somewhere else. It seems like a bizarre sort of conurbation, nothing but chain-store malls and endless suburbs, with a surprisingly small downtown, considering that Phoenix is supposed to be the fifth-largest metro area in the country. Nothing that we could see looked at all historic. By the time we checked into the Holiday Inn Express downtown we were too exhausted to go out (besides, it's like 110 degrees outside -- no exaggeration -- and no one felt like walking in that). So we ordered Pizza Hut dinner to the hotel and crashed, watching TV. Apparently that hike took more out of us than we thought...

Searching for the Searchers

STATES VISITED: Arizona / Utah

If you've ever seen a John Ford movie, you don't need my amateur shots to show you what we saw this morning -- Monument Valley, Arizona, probably the most bizarre landscape I've ever traveled through. Yes, Iceland is like being on the moon, but Monument Valley is like being on Mars -- red sandstone buttes thrusting up out of a flat scrubby desert, huge panoramas of unearthly colors and stark shapes.

We were lucky enough to have booked a tour with a Navajo guide, Carl Phillips of Keyah Hozhoni Tours, who drove us around in his open-sided truck to areas that the regular tourists can't go. These included formations like the Eye of the Sun (left) and the Big Hogan (right), which if you lie down on your back looks like a giant eagle is hovering over you, homest. Even better, Carl taught us a lot of things about Navajo culture, which has remained much more intact than other tribal cultures. He led us us into a hogan and a sweat lodge and explained how they were built; he showed us his ID card that allows him to carry around peyote, because it's a vital part of tribal spiritual ceremonies. Carl recently moved back to the Valley after living in Las Vegas for a few years, working in construction, so he has a pretty intelligent perspective on what makes his culture special. We were covered in the red dust when we finished our tour, but it was really worth it.

After that -- well, after a detour to a town called Mexican Hat where Carl said we could see the Colorado (he was wrong, it was only the San Juan River ), it was back to Kayenta, where we had lunch at Burger King, not just for the yummy fast food but also because that is where the tribe has mounted an excellent exhibit on the Navajo Wind Talkers of World War II. It takes up a whole wall in the Burger King and isfull of war memorabilia. Who'd have expected that?

A long drive then, across the Navajo tribal lands, which got even more barren (picture to come) and then more colorful again, and finally turned -- surprise! -- into forest again. By now we were in the Kaibab National Forest, on our way to the Grand Canyon. I tried to ban the male members of my family from saying, "Wow! What a big hole!" but so far I have been unsuccessful. It is a pretty big hole, though.

We checked into the Maswik Lodge, had a quick dinner at the cafeteria (not as good as Deer Valley's, but then what is?) and took a walk along the rim at sunset. Absolutely incredible. I'll post more pictures tomorrow (it's late -- we changed time zones again, without even realizing it!), and this rustic lodge doesn't even have wi-fi -- can you believe it? -- so I'm posting this on Bob's computer after he finished using it and now everybody's yelling at me to go to sleep. Anyway, tomorrow we have this big hike schedulo, and maybe we'll even find the place where Joe Dirt got abandoned in the classic film Joe Dirt. We already found the place where the Griswolds visited the Grand Canyon, so all our movie references are lining up very nicely, thank you...

Butte Heads

STATES VISITED: Colorado / New Mexico / Arizona / Utah

The Wyman House served one of the best breakfasts ever -- a cheese and green chile frittata, biscuit, and hash browns -- and then Grace and took a walk around Silverton in the cool morning mountain air. This really is a lovely little town, with Wild West flair -- Wyatt Earp once owned a saloon here, where he and his buddy Bat Masterson hung out. Even the "bad" side of town -- the once notorious Blair Street, which in its heyday had a score of brothels and 30-some saloons -- is charming nowadays.








We drove south on the San Juan Scenic Skyway (a wimpy road, compared to that Million Dollar Hellway of yesterday) to Durango. Yet another of these Wild West mining boom towns that's been all slicked up to draw tourists -- but Durango is more of a real town, and we liked it a lot. While Tom and Grace and I went bagel shopping, Bob and Hugh visited the museum of the Silverton and Durango Narrow Gauge Railroad. I kinda wish now we'd been able to work a ride on that train into our schedule.







At Durango we headed west again, bound for Mesa Verde National Park -- another sight that I've written about in a couple of books but never got a chance to visit until now. It seems that you have to drive forever from the gate just to get to the visitor center, winding round and round these scrubby mesas through hidden valleys, climbing ever upward.

Random bit of dialogue on the road up: Grace -- "Why do we have to go see these Indian ruins when you just said that they are the same as the Indian ruins we saw two years ago in New Mexico?" Hugh: "Hold that sass, sister." Bob: "Sass? Is that why you boys call your sister Sasquatch?" Hugh: "Ooh, Grace, you've been lawyered!" Hugh and Tom in chorus: "Oh, dang! Oh, dang! Oh, daaanng!!"

The views from the top, though, are jaw-dropping. While we were gazing out over that valley, Grace and I saw this herd of free-range horses cross the park road, stopping traffic.

We didn't have time to do one of the in-depth ranger tours, but we did drive the Mesa Top Road, where we got to see some ancient pit dwellings, a number of excavated kivas (the Anasazis' central ceremonial rooms), and, viewed from across the canyon, a spectacular line-up of cliff dwellings. The engineering and architectural genius of these peoples is staggering, especially when you consider the tools they had available.


It was such a beautiful blue-sky day, the perfect conditions for seeing these vast canyons and their ancient buildings. And looking around, there was no doubt that we were out of the mountains and into the desert. Gone were the aspens and lodge-pole pines; now we were amidst pinyon and juniper trees (those lovely blue berries, precious source of gin). We saw a lizard skittering around near the path -- a new entry on our wildlife log.

Leaving Mesa Verde mid-afternoon, the race was on to get to Four
Corners. Now the desert was really getting dramatic, with strange buttes and other outcroppings. Down in the southwest corner of Colorado, we crossed the state line and entered Navajo tribal lands, where a monument has been set up at the exact point where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona meet. Geographers recently recalculated the states' meeting point and have declared that it's somewhere else, about a mile away, but there are no roads to get to that spot -- so we tourists continue to flock to the spot set up in 1912 as the Four Corners Monument.

I'm afraid there are only two possible snapshots to take at this spot -- one where a single individual is posed with one limb in each state (like something out of a game of Twister) or one where each member of a family is standing in a different state. We opted for the latter. Grace is in Arizona, Tom in New Mexico, and Hugh -- colossus that he is -- stands astride Utah and Colorado. So yes, we visited all the states I listed above, but two of them were kinda cheating...

The Navajos are working the Four Corners site for all it's worth -- selling frybread, T-shirts, pottery, jewelry, the works. We did our best to subsidize tribal activities with several purchases.




Then on through more Navajo desert, through tiny town after tiny town, each consisting mostly of a gas station and a trading post. Bob expressed some skepticism about what we'd find at Kayenta, where our reservations were for tonight, but when we got here we were pleasantly surprised. It's a proper town, with an airport and several businesses; they have a Burger King, a McDonald's, a Sonic drive-in -- all the comforts of home.

The Hampton Inn, where we are staying, is actually excellent -- built to look like an adobe, but smartly furnished inside. We ate at the hotel's restaurant and I had a green chile stew that was one of the best things I've eaten this trip. During dinner, a ponytailed man strolled around playing a traditional wooden flute, a soothing sound that was way better than any muzak or jukebox.

After dinner we walked around the Navajo Cultural Center next door, which has models of traditional hogans, a sweat lodge, and a shade lodge. Our walk, however, was cut short when we noticed a jackal roaming around the Burger King parking lot next door. Another new entry on our wildlife log, and a creepy one. Yes, folks, we are in the desert indeed.

Held Up in the Mountains

STATE VISITED: Colorado

AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! I left my computer in the lovely Grand Hyatt in Denver. The charming people in security have promised to UPS it to me, but the way we're moving around, there's no easy place to have it shipped to. So they're sending it back to New York. Meanwhile I have to use Tom's computer, which is much cooler than mine. Niiiiiiice.

Well, when I should have been packing my computer, we were having one last walk around Denver, while Bob took care of some phone calls back to the office in New York. That's when we found the Brown Palace Hotel, which has one of the coolest lobbies I've ever seen -- a nine-story atrium with a stained-glass skylight at the top, and wrought-iron railings around all the balconies overlooking the atrium. Awesome, especially considering that it was built in 1892,, way before the Hyatt Corporation started slapping garden atriums on all their hotels.

Near the elevators I was fascinated by a facing pair of murals, one depicting travelers arriving by stagecoach, the other showing them descending the steps of an airplane (albeit a 1940s-era plane). The more things change...




We hit the road at (ahem) 10:30 (those pesky phone calls) and headed due west on I-70. I kept snapping pictures to show how the mountains grew taller around us, mile by mile -- the scrubby brown hills were overtaken by pine-shrouded peaks, and eventually granite summits with patches of snow.


We never got quite high enough to have snow around us -- I don't think they build highways that high -- but we did get over 10,000 feet in places. As we first hit the Continental Divide at the Vail summit, our ears popped -- and so did a bag of Tostitos we had in the back seat.

Back east we have roadside signs warning to watch out for deer crossing. Out here, the signs alert you to look for elk and bighorn sheep. No actual wildlife sightings, however, except for some jackrabbit roadkill, a pair of deer waiting to cross the highway, and one scared little bunny trembling by the road's verge.

We went a little out of our way so we could see Vail, the chi-chi ski resort, all tricked up to look like a mini-Gstaad. There were cyclists all over the place (they've laid out a nifty bike path), and some people lounging by pools and eating on the outdoor patios of restaurants, but nothing like what I imagine the crowds must be in ski season. It's a little precious, I must say.

We turned off the interstate just past Vail -- ignoring the commands of Ms. Garmin, that interstate-obssessed minx, who wanted us to go all the way to Grand Junction -- and started our day's odyssey down two-lane mountain highways, where the towns are few and far between. The next sizeable place we came to was the poetically-named Leadville, where fortunes were made in lead mining in the 1880s and 1890s. The main downtown street is still lined with substantial stone buildings, and wide enough for quite an impressive gun shoot-out, like in the movies. All the place needs is hitching posts in front of the saloons instead of parked cars.

We had lunch in the Golden Burro Cafe (with the adjoined Brass Ass Bar). Here is a picture of Hugh enjoying his Coke with an improvised extra-long straw. Note that the rest of us at the table do not get to have straws with our drinks; Hugh commandeered them all. Ah, well, let's indulge him, he'll be going away to college soon.

Several miles south of Leadville, we turned west again on US 50, which runs through the Gunnison River Valley -- a truly spectacular stretch of mountain landscape. For a while, the river frisks along next to the highway, twisting and turning through the mountain meadows. Eventually, though, it widens into the beautiful Blue Mesa Lake, which runs for a few miles. At the bottom is a dam, and below that the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a national park that we wished we'd had time to hike around. That's the trouble with this cross-country agenda -- all we can do is skim the surface. On the other hand, when you think that just two days ago we were rolling through Kansas wheatfields, the compare-and-contrast aspect of this odyssey is amazing.

We stopped for McFlurries at a McDonald's in Gunnison, which seemed more of a viable town than Leadville -- a bit of historic downtown left, but lots of motels and restaurants and even a college in town, Western Colorado State.

In Montrose, we turned south on Highway 550. I hadn't realized that this road -- a route we picked for convenience's sake -- was the fabled Million Dollar Highway, which I wrote about in 500 Places to Take The Kids Before They Grow Up. It's named that because it cost a million dollars to build, back in the 1880s or whenever, to serve a string of mining towns during the gold and silver rushes. The section from Ouray to Silverton is incredibly scenic -- and one of the scariest drives I've ever had to drive in my life. Hairpin turns and switchbacks, at intense altitudes, with no guard rails -- now I regret that I recommended it to readers. (I'm glad I dropped it from the second edition.) And I had the bad luck to be the driver on duty for that stretch of road, with some serious backseat driving from my co-driver. Do you know how hard it is to accelerate uphill when you've just had to slow down to 10 MPH to get around a sharp curve? I'm just glad we weren't trying to cross that pass an hour later, when it was beginning to get dark.

Around 7:30 we pulled into Silverton, another of those historic mining towns, though one with a bit more pizzazz than Leadville. We're staying at the Wyman House Hotel, built in 1903, a lovely late Victorian hotel that's now a frilly bed-and-breakfast. Not our usual hotel fare, but that's the only type of hotel they have in this town. Well, I guess we can sleep in brass bed with flowery wallpaper for one night.

Rocky Mountain High

STATE VISITED: Colorado

You've gotta love a city that's as pedestrian-friendly as Denver. The city fathers here have really figured out the transit alternatives -- light rail, buses, a free shuttle that crosses downtown continually along pedestrianized 16th Street. There are bikes everywhere, too. I gather that Denver's downtown used to be sketchy, but now you walk around and there's shops and cafes lined up, blocks between the skyscrapers turned into neat public parks, and warehouses on the edges of downtown converted to condos and lofts. Somebody is clearly doing something right.

We walked first from our hotel to the state capitol, with its tall gold-skinned dome. We were told that if you stand on the thirteenth step leading up to the capital, you'll be exactly one mile above sea level. Unfortunately, there was some sort of bill-signing ceremony taking place right on the thirteenth step, so we couldn't check it out for ourselves.



Those pioneer trails we learned about back in Independence? One route, called the Smoky Ridge Trail, ended right here in Denver, an end point for both of the big stagecoach companies of the time, Butterfield and Wells Fargo. This fountain near the capitol marks where that stagecoach terminus once stood. I love the statue of the gun-toting stagecoach guard on top.

The guy who founded Denver, a General Larimer, did the shrewd political thing and named the city after the then territorial governor, who was called Denver. But the general couldn't resist naming the main commercial street after himself. During Denver's mining heyday in the 1870s and 1880s, Larimer Street was where all the action in Denver was. When the silver market went bust in 1893, however, this silver-mining boom city became a bust city, and Larimer Street turned into a notorious skid row.


Then, a few years ago, urban renaissance targeted Larimer Street, and the decrepit old buildings were all spiffed up. Now they've got Starbucks, cutesy shops, and cafes in them. I guess those cables strung over the street (the historic bit is only a block long) are strings of lights at night, which may be an enchanting effect. In the daylight, though, it looks more like some kind of aviary at a zoo.




I do like Denver's 19th-century architecture though -- the round arches, the big blocks of stone, the little neoclassical cornices and borders. Maybe it's because Denver's boom ended so abruptly that these turn-of-the-century gems didn't get knocked down. This is a cool one we saw -- the name (if you can read the carved stone plaque over the doorway) is the Ghost Building.

In other cities you have stone lions guarding the steps of the main courthouse; in Denver, it's bighorn sheep perched there. I wouldn't mess with them.


Denver feels to me a lot like Seattle -- the same kind of progressive, no-nonsense vibe. Okay, so it's got mountains instead of Puget Sound, and it doesn't have the Space Needle or Pike Place Market. (Significant losses, there.) Still, it has a great city personality.

While we were walking around downtown, we discovered this great walkway / bike path running along a rushing creek, sunken below street level. They keep the speeding bikes and skaters on one side and walkers and joggers on the other, so you don't get run down. On a hot day like today, it was great to be strolling next to the water, hidden away from the traffic.






In the afternoon we drove out to Boulder, which is only about a half hour northeast of the city, snuggled even closer to the mountains. Boulder is the sort of big college town where I'd bet people never leave, even after they graduate. Why would anyone leave? It's full of bookstores and cafes and record shops and trendy clothing boutiques; the west end of town has block after block of handsome Queen Anne-style houses with broad front porches and enormous shade trees.


Two completely idiosyncratic landmarks we had to find in Denver: Jax Fish House (left), where some guy named Hosea who was Hugh's favorite Top Chef contestant cooks; and this anonymous looking tech-park office on the outskirts where some cycle wizard is supposedly building a super-customized bike for Bob. If it ever gets finished.

Then back to town for the Rockies game! Coors Field really impressed us; it's got that retro thing going (I love these downtown stadiums where people can walk to the game), but inside it's roomy and nicely open to the mountain breezes.















The obligatory fountains in the outfield . . . .


... and the Rockies mascot. I think it's a stegosaurus. How that is connected to the Rockies, I have no idea, but the little kids loved him. Probably because he reminds them of Barney. (Is Barney still on TV?)

This was probably the best game we've seen so far. It was tied 4-4 from the fourth inning on, but there were lots of hits, so victory always seemed to be in the balance. Plenty of pitching changes, pinch hitters -- all sorts of unpredictable elements. The crowd was noisy and friendly; there weren't a lot of fans from the opposing team, the Washington Nationals -- too far away -- so everyone could afford to be genial.

The Rockies finally squeaked out a run in the bottom of the eighth, and their closer managed to wrap things up in the top of the ninth. The bizarre thing was that the win was credited to a relief pitcher, Alan Embree, who came in briefly in the 8th. Just after he took the mound, the Nationals runner on first tried to steal, and Embree whirled around and caught him out, ending the inning. In the next inning, the Rockies scored the winning run, when Embree was still technically the pitcher, so he got credited with the win. But when the Rockies next took the field, Embree was replaced -- he never actually threw a single pitch. How often does that happen, that the winning pitcher didn't throw a pitch? You gotta love the wackiness of baseball.

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

STATES VISITED: Missouri /Kansas / Colorado

Today was our biggest mileage push, barreling across the whole of Kansas and a goodly portion of Colorado – over 600 miles in one day. We figured there were fewer attractions to see in Kansas, so we might as well just drive like a batmobile out of hell.

Naturally, once we got going, we discovered that I-70 through Kansas offers non-stop tourist action. The Legendary Dorothy House, in Liberal KS! The Steinberg Natural History Museum in Hays KS! The hometown of Wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley in (you guessed it) Oakley KS! The world’s largest prairie dog town in Grainfield KS! The Prairie Museum in Colby KS! And, only a hundred miles or so off the road, Castle Rock, the Pioneer Museum (in Nebraska, actually, but so long as you’re in the area), and the world-famous Rock City in Minneapolis, KS, which used to be advertised in huge yellow letters on the roofs of barns all over the Midwest (those that weren’t already advertising Mammoth Cave or Mail Pouch Tobacco). Alas, we had no time for any of it.

On the other hand, the landscape was worth the whole trip. First, between Manhattan and Salina, we rolled through the Flint Hills, a luminous rolling panorama of rounded hilltops and wooded hollows and outcrops of gray stone, in spots almost reminiscent of Ireland. The soil here is too thin and rocky for much agriculture, so a fair bit remains of the original tallgrass prairie that used to blanket this part of the world. The grass grows taller here because eastern Kansas isn’t as dry as western Kansas, and it’s a rich mix of blue stem and other grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. It was still too early in the season for the really tall growth – five or six feet high – but beautiful nonetheless.

We stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen in Abilene, home of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Not surprisingly, after yesterday’s Truman marathon, the kids refused to visit the Eisenhower site. Oh, well, another opportunity squandered.

By the way, notice that yellow emblem on the road signs. It’s supposed to be a sunflower – Kansas is known as the Sunflower State. After the beehive on Utah road signs, this is now my next favorite state highway emblem.

The terrain became much flatter west of Salina. The only trees we could see were planted in a dense cluster around the farmhouses – otherwise it’s just a horizon-wide sweep of high plains. Crops stretched out on either hand – first soybeans on the right and wheat on the left, then changing to wheat on the left and soybeans on the right, the soybeans sparkling in intense green, the wheat a plush carpet of dry gold.

There wasn’t as much corn as I had expected, though -- so much for “I’m as corny as Kansas in August.” Maybe it’s just too dry for corn. Wherever we saw corn, I also noticed these spidery steel irrigation contraptions.

Houses are few and far between out here. Every once in a while, you'll see something mirage-like shimmering on the horizon that looks like a cluster of condo towers, but it turns out to be a huge complex of silos and grain elevators. It made me think of the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends see the Emerald City towering in the distance -- I wonder if L. Frank Baum had this in mind?

Another thing I noticed, agriculture-wise -- instead of those spotted herds of dairy cows like we have back east, the cows here were mostly these brawny black cattle. Black Angus? Some kind of beef cattle, for sure. I suppose this is the part of their lives where they get to frolic free before they get shipped off to some hellhole of a feedlot. (See, I've been reading my Michael Pollan.)

Given the wide open spaces, I guess it’s not surprising that we’d roll through a few miles of land that have been converted to a new high-tech wind farm.

If you look close, down to the right you’ll see an old-fashioned prairie windmill, like something out of Shane or High Plains Drifter, dwarfed by those gleaming steel blades of the new giants. (Props to Hugh for getting this all in one shot.)

Past the wind farm, we also saw a few farms with a number of little oil wells pumping away amidst the soybeans. The heads of these pumps remind me of the cartoon crows Heckle and Jekyll, dipping their beaks rhythmically up and down.

At long last we crossed the line into a new time zone – the evocatively named Mountain Time – and soon after crossed the border into Colorado. We thought we'd see mountains right away -- HA! No, just more high plains, though it did get a little more hilly, with tufts of silvery sagebrush cropping up in the grassy margins along the road.

And hey -- guess what the speed limit is here? TAKE THAT YOU CONNECTICUT WIMPS!! Needless to say, everybody still drives at 10 miles over the speed limit.

Then the real drama of the drive began -- we drove right into a violent thunderstorm. We could spot it several miles ahead across the plains -- really dramatic. It lasted for about 20 intense minutes, then we could see the blue skies ahead, and we got our first glimpse of the Rockies in the distance. (You can't see it in these pictures, though.) Here's the sequence:

Traffic in Denver was abysmal -- there had been a six-car pile-up on I-70 east of downtown, and we got caught in the standstill traffic. By the time we pulled into the Grand Hyatt, we were thoroughly exhausted from our long day's journey into night. Which meant just one thing -- room service dinner!! YAY!!!!!