On Thursday morning, Charles and Lee Lee took me to see the Tiny Farm -- a little oasis conceived and created by Lee Lee with lots of help from donors and volunteers and Charles. It is on the grounds of a prep school, Kent Denver, and the whole idea was to make a space for all sorts of learning. All three of their kids went to that school, and Lee Lee taught drama there for many years. Now she administers a huge camp program during the summer and part of the curriculum is in this space: gardening, animals, environmental issues, art, writing. It has lots of distinct areas for groups of students to focus on the topic at hand. In the winter, everything is covered with snow and very quiet but it is easy to imagine the dozens of little feet tramping over the paths on the way to the chickens or the goats or the ponies or the flower garden. It was windy and cold, so we didn't spend too much time there.
They dropped me off at Dena's house and I ended up spending the entire afternoon lying on the couch, reading and napping. A day off from my traveling job. Meanwhile, Jon and Dena did a bunch of house projects. Dena said she just wanted advice so she could make some repairs but mostly they just did them.
Then back to Charles' house with some yummy barbecue and we got to see Ella and Tillie and Tillie's boyfriend briefly. That was a treat.
The next day we woke up early and hit the road, knowing that we had an 11 hour drive ahead of us. We thought the weather looked promising and we decided to take I-80 because it only went up to about 8000 feet instead of 10,000 something. Plus that's how Google said to go.
Everything went swimmingly for about four hours. There were rock formations and mountains and places that reminded Jon of old Westerns. It is always good to see the vast and awe-some terrain out here. It was 7 degrees when we left Denver and got up to about 12 degrees, with winds of 40 - 60 mph. We stopped at the West End Cafe which was only open as a drive-through and we got excellent sandwiches and a mango smoothie. Then, since there was nothing much else to do, I took a nap.
I woke up when Jon was braking hard unexpectedly. For some reason everyone was stopped. Then there was a sign that said I-80 was closed and everyone had to exit. We dutifully waited in line until we realized that the entire row of trucks was just parked. So we drove past the long parade of trucks, got off at the exit, asked the lone policeman in his car who was guarding the entrance ramp barricade what the prognosis was. He didn't know, but he expected it to be closed all night and even longer. There were some cars, like we had been, interspersed in the line, but they didn't realize that if they didn't get out, they were going to be there until the next morning. It was very windy and snow was starting to blow sideways. Jon asked how we might go around this part of the interstate and he said we could go back to Route 30 and make a big loop on little roads. At that time we were theoretically about two hours east of Salt Lake City, in normal times.
We backtracked about 40 miles, then headed north on a two lane highway. It got windier and snowier, with times when there was no visibility at all, with occasional moments of better clarity. We had our flashers on as did everyone else. Three hours later we were no closer in time to Salt Lake City, but we had managed to get back to I-80 just past the closed part. Of course, I was tense the whole time because there is nothing good about driving in high wind with snow blowing everywhere. Jon had to put up with my stress but he wasn't very stressed, as the driver. I hate passing the plows when there is a moment when you really can't see anything at all. If it were me, I would happily go slow enough to follow the plow and who cares if we only go 35 mph. We have our own plow.
We got to our destination, Elko, Nevada four hours later than anticipated. That was 15 hours sitting on our butts, with a few stops for fuel and food and bathrooms. That is one of the things that has changed a lot in the last 20 - 50 years -- gas stations have changed over to being rest stops with lots of food. In the old days, you had to wait for one of the highway rest stops. No more.
Of course since we are still completely fine, Jon gets to be right about how fast he was driving, etc. But no one knows how much help it is to have a worrywart sitting next to you.In good news, there was no yelling.
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