Zeke and I drove out to Denver and Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago to visit friends. It was kind of a semi-spur-of-the-moment trip. We ended up leaving at around 5 pm on a Tuesday, planning to arrive in Denver on Wednesday. It meant driving late into the night to try to get to the halfway point, which is nearly 700 miles. We pulled over into a rest area in Kansas, which I recognized from previous trips, and spent the night in the back of the truck.
I have a camper shell, and I made a bed with a foam mattress, so it wasn’t as bad as that might sound. Zeke also had a foam mattress. I slept in a sleeping bag, which was plenty warm, and I tossed a sleeping bag over Zeke, so he was warm, too. We got up pretty early the next morning and headed west on I-70. As we drove, I started seeing signs saying that I-70 was closed at Burlington, Co., not far across the state line. I looked at a map and decided to try for Colby, where I could get a hotel that allowed dogs.
The weather got worse as we drove. This is what we were driving into.
It wasn’t snowing, but the wind was blowing. I saw two tractor-trailer trucks on their sides, blown over by the wind. I still didn’t realize exactly how strong the wind was until we got to the hotel in Colby, and I could barely stand up whenI got out of the truck. The wind took one of my gloves out the open door, and it flew away into the distance.
My phone’s weather radar app showed what looked like a hurricane just east of Denver. I have never seen anything like that outside of an actual hurricane, and I have never experienced a steady, high wind like that. Denver was getting blasted by the wind and a good bit of snow. A lot of people got stranded on I-25, especially south of Denver.
Anyway, the hotel was pretty swanky. Here’s the pool.
That’s dirt, not ice.
The hotel was actually OK. The only problem, aside from the fact that an idiot had tried and failed to hook up the TV to the cable outlet, was that Zeke was constantly whining at the door to go outside. Going outside was not a pleasant experience. The next morning I checked the Colorado transportation web site, which said I-70 was still closed. Checkout time approached and passed, and the interstate was still closed. I walked Zeke across the parking lot and down the street a short way. I found my errant glove beside the road. I drove around a while to kill some time. The wind was still blowing hard. How hard was the wind blowing? Hard enough to blow the stripes off the pavement.
I-70 reopened around mid-afternoon. The highway was almost completely clear of snow, with only a few icy spots. There was almost no snow to be seen, on the road or off. I guess it all blew away.
Zeke and I arrived at the house of my friends Errol and Cookie, who I have known for many years, just in time to meet their daughter Debra, who I have also known for many years, and go out to dinner. Her husband and son drove separately and met us at the restaurant. We left Zeke with Errol and Cookie’s two dogs, who had access to the fenced back yard through a doggie door. We had just sat down to eat when I got a call from a Denver number. I almost didn’t answer it because everyone I know in Denver was sitting at the table with me. But I answered, and it was a good thing I did. An extremely nice young woman said that she had found a pretty white and brown dog running across a busy street near my friends’ house. Zeke had climbed a low section of the fence and escaped. He escaped again the next day, but we caught him before he could make for the highway.
My friend’s brother Tom, who I have also known for many years, lives in Edgewood, NM, just east of Albuquerque. He had eye surgery scheduled for the next week, so my friends were going to drive down to help out. It was a good opportunity to see Tom, who I had not seen for several years.
Tom lives in the house he built within sight of I-70. It consists of a house facing a studio across a sunken patio. This is a view from the house towards the studio.
If you look carefully you can see a bust of Richard Feynman, the famous physicist. Here’s a closer view of the bust, which Tom did.
As you can see, Tom is an artist, among other things. His studio is not where he does his sculpting. That he does in his living room. His studio is for making videos. Tom is very involved in the politics of Edgewood, which apparently has more than its share of small-town political funny business. He makes videos to publicize what the mayor and council are doing. It makes the city officials mad.
Tom also keeps a couple of sheep on his property, mainly for the ambience.
We ate green chile cheeseburgers a couple of times, but, unfortunately, no Mexican meals. On the other hand, Tom prepared a couple of quite nice, well-presented dinners, befitting someone who went to Europe for cooking classes.
I couldn’t stay for Tom’s eye surgery. Zeke and I left on Wednesday, heading east on I-40. We stopped that night at a rest area in Arkansas. That rest area was also familiar to me, as I have spent the night there in the back of another truck on a number of occasions.
I saw a lot of windmills on the way out to Denver, and even more on the way back east. There are scores visible from the highway west of Amarillo, and more on the east side. The land is flat there, and, as we found on the way out, the flat plains experience a lot of wind. They are impressive during the day, but eerie at night. At night I could barely see the towers against a cloudy sky. The spinning blades made them look like tall stick men waving their arms at the passing traffic.
We got back home around 9 pm on Thursday. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but when I went to bed that night, I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, and I didn’t move for seven hours.
