373 Miles on Monday, 469 on Tuesday

We were in Santa Fe yesterday morning and tonight we are back in Manhattan, KS. Not a lot to report in between because I am not that good at describing scenery. All the words from my geology classes keep coming back to me, though, as we zoom through these different landscapes, and I wonder how much of this used to be a lake bed, long long ago. I don't really understand how these mountains are laid out, as so often we seem to be in a bowl, surrounded by mountains, and the highway is headed for the easiest way past or over the next ridge. We were at about 7000 feet when we started out and by the time we got to Denver we had dropped down to 5280. Lots of dry, toasty, scrubby scenery. Lots of places that are ready for water whenever it comes thundering through -- ditches and swales and culverts that probably rarely see water these days.

It took a fair amount of planning and calculating for Jon to find us the right place for us to stop and have simultaneous Zoom calls. Mine was scheduled a month ago, a little randomly since I didn't know exactly where we would be. Jon planned his work call to line up with mine. We crossed the Colorado border and went into a Western-looking town called Trinidad. Found the coffee shop that he had selected, parked on the street right in front (a small town) and got ourselves organized in a dark little side alcove with video games and black light.  I was talking about CSA stuff with Becky and our guy from Local Food Marketplace and I looked pretty spooky in the dark, with a psychodelic poster behind my head. After our calls we drove down the street to the Safeway and shopped for lunch stuff. It is always amazing to find every Safeway in the country looking exactly the same -- we never shop there at home, but the fonts and house brands are reassuring and familiar from my childhood. It seems that butterscotch pudding is no longer something that you can find in the deli section: that was the cross country treat that I remember when we took a break crossing long and boring Texas or Wyoming, all those years ago.

We got to Dena's house exactly as planned at 5 PM. She was completely prepared with dinner. Charles and Lee Lee and Jacob's girlfriend Emily joined us. We used all the chairs in the house, eating appetizers in the kitchen and dinner on the couches. I think Dena's house is a 13 chair house. Cozy and comfortable and not too big at all. We talked about online dating, our various driving perspectives (Lee Lee says she is just like me, Charles says he learned a lot from Jon long ago), our trip, my cousins. Jacob arrived after work, just before we all started to fade.

This morning I talked myself into going out for a walk. It was about 25 degrees and sunny and I knew we would be sitting in the car for eight hours or more. I definitely felt like I was working hard because I am soft and out of shape and we are still a mile up from sea level, but it was a good city walk. I got sweaty, even just marching along on level sidewalks. That was Solo Walk #2 on my new knee. One in the Sierras, one in Denver. When we get back home, it will be less interesting but so much easier at a lower elevation.

After much debating with himself, Jon decided we could take I-70 instead of the smaller roads that he prefers. In the end, it was a good choice because we momentarily forgot we were crossing a time zone and we lost an hour. We had to hustle to get to the barbecue place to pick up dinner before it closed at 7:00. And the last half of the trip was in fog. We could only see the bottom parts of the wind turbines, and the tips of the fins that were closest to the ground. Are they fins? Rotors? Wings? When is the last time anyone saw hundreds of miles of fog? At least the road was straight and not too crowded, and there was no ice. I was not nervous as we hurtled along at 70+ mph.

We got to Paul's house (same Paul as before, in Kansas) where we found the table set, waiting. Jon had made good choices and we ate happily. For some reason, Paul and Jon got all carried away talking about mechanical things while Dan and I listened, halfway. They had left our bed just as we left it (so did Dena) -- it's like coming back home again. We have a load of laundry going, even though we are only five days from home.