Sunday, August 15, 2010

Garden City

We are in Garden City, Kansas tonight.  It is 300 miles East of Alamosa where we stayed last night.   We are still 400 miles away from our home in KC. 

We were up after 7 this morning, which is early for us.  We knew we would loose an hour today as we entered the Central Time Zone.  Still it was after 9 when we departed.  It is hard to remove the stripes from the Tiger!  We had not hooked to the water last night, but had used the water from our tank, so our gray tank was needing attention, and dumping at the parks dump station will usually eat up about a half hour.

Alamosa is at 7500 feet, and it was really brisk overnight.  I was up about 4:30 and the temperature read 44 degrees.  And about 52 inside the MH, so I plugged in our little oil radiator heater.   It is thermostatic, so it was set at 68.  It makes no noise and you really have no sensation that it is running, unless you touch it, but I am sure it helped!

Once on the road, the miles began passing fairly quickly, until we had to climb  another pass.   La Veta pass is the last pass out of the mountains on highway 160, before you reach Interstate 25 South of Pueblo.  We climbed to 9500 feet and reached the summit.  After driving thru so many passes on this trip, it seemed anti climatic.  That is why the locals zoom over these passes and see nothing at all.  They are only thinking of the destination and that they are late.

I had decided to take a short cut on Highway 10 rather than go North to Pueblo.  That turned out mostly all right, except the East end of the highway where it paralleled US 50 was decidedly rough.  We rumbled and bounced our way thru it.  Once on US 50, the road was much better, and we had missed driving in Pueblo.  I think we saved about an hour.  Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas are prairie land that sometimes has crops, when it can be irrigated.

It all looks the same after a few miles.  Go slow thru a small town, then speed up and race to the next.  But traffic is light, and it seemed as though we made good time, even after a half hour lunch break in a truck stop parking area.

We arrived here at RJ’s RV Park about 4, but that was really 5 since we hadn’t fixed our clocks yet.  It was hot!  I think 97 or close to that.  I had watched the temp on the dash climb steadily as we left the mountains back at I 25.  We are not used to the heat now since we have been away from it for two weeks.

Not much to do here so we went to Wal Mart again tonight.  I think we have been in at least half the Wal Marts nation wide.  We are parked under some trees, so the satellite doesn’t see its bird, so TV will be limited.  A slow nite to be sure.

Retired Rod

3 comments:

  1. I'll second the Wal*Mart comment. I know we have been in a bunch. I guess it is good to have a store you can depend on for meds., food, and such. Wish we didn't have to depend on it so much; it can really become a budget buster. Take care, Pidge

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  2. Sound like an interesting drive. I suppose by the time you read this comment you may be home safe and sound - and probably pretty tired too!

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  3. Quite adventorous..hope u would be fine now....

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