Odometer: 2,654 miles. Two days: 794 miles.
A loop to visit our kids in Golden and Nashville necessitated the long drive between their locations. Our roundabout route resulted in these being the days! When Samuel heads from Golden to Denver airport, which is to the east of the city, he describes it as “being in Kansas.” It is away from the rolling foothills that he loves. We were about to experience Kansas!
This leg was one of contrasts. Variety is the spice of life! Coming out of the mountains, we greatly enjoyed visiting with Amy and Eric in Keystone and spending the night in front of Dave and Sheila’s White Barn near Fort Collins. Saydee could not control her running inside such large open spaces after two weeks in the van. I realized how I’m appreciating that everything is within reach when sitting in the van!
Over these two days, we dropped from over 11,000 ft elevation to less than 2,000 ft. The joy of increased oxygen was overwhelmed by the body’s attempt to handle the heat. On day 17, we woke to the low 50s in the Flat Tops, needing a sweatshirt. On Day 18, Kansas’s heatwave doubled that temperature to 110 degrees! Arvan performed well in all conditions. For our night in Kansas after the high of 110 degrees, we dry camped, relying on our batteries to power our air conditioner after shutting off our generator at 10 pm. Setting the thermostat to 77 degF with a couple of fans blowing on us enabled comfort through the night, with sufficient battery juice left in the morning to make our coffee!
We also said goodbye to the Rockies. We like mountains. As we left them behind and headed east, the only surprise was how long it took to drive across east Colorado to reach Kansas. It was as flat and featureless as expected, though food needs to come from somewhere!
However, Kansas had a couple of fun surprises for us the following day, but those adventures are for another blog to tell.
The Adventures of the Cajunlimeys 