Road Trippin': Days 6 to 8

Having spent the majority of our road trip on America's lesser highways, we decided to see what Kansas would look like if we crossed it on a road other than Interstate 70. We've both done that drive a billion times, and it's really boring. So if you go just a wee bit farther north, this is what Kansas looks like.

Not as flat as we all thought! In fact, I have a theory that Kansas' topography runs in parallel east-west lines. So if you just go straight across, you get no scenery, but if you go north-south, what you see is more interesting.

Being off the beaten path also led us by some of the country's lesser-known side-attractions. In Cawker City, KS, we discovered [one of] the World's Largest Ball[s] of Twine. (According to Wiki, there are 4 balls in the running for the title.)

Somewhere in the middle, we discovered that some of our distant relatives apparently have the corner on the Kansas RV market.

And speaking of the middle, we also took the time to go the extra 4 miles out of our way to the Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States. (Also disputed.) This is near the humble town of Lebanon, Kansas, and is pretty much the Middle of Nowhere. But there's a nice, tiny little chapel, a flagpole, and an old, deserted hotel. Must've been quite the hotspot back in the 50s when family road trips were king!

And Seamus was still a champion travel companion.

So, it turns out that all the jokes and snide remarks about how flat Kansas is really ought to be saved for EASTERN COLORADO. What the hey!!! We crossed the border just before sundown, and this is pretty much all we saw for over 100 miles. We passed thru a whopping 4 towns, none of which had any signs of life or gas or food whatsoever. Just a bunch of ghost towns out there, I tell you!

But fortunately, we made it to Denver at last where we stayed at my Aunt Kelli's house. This is Carson and my cousin Shasta's son Ayden playing with Seamus. He loves chasing water about as much as he loves chasing his tennis ball.

We had a great visit with Grandma Wilcox.Carson especially loved riding on her walker.

And then we had a really great time meeting up with Austin's cousins and their kids at a big park nearby. We had a picnic and played on the playground and had a game of soccer with a giant bouncy ball. It was awesome. But guess who left the camera in the car and was too lazy to go back and get it again? For shame, for shame.

But I did take a picture of this hilarious car ornament.

And at last, when all the fun was squeezed out of Denver, we continued our winding path westward. We were delighted to be reminded that western Colorado is much more topographically interesting than the eastern plains.

So we drove about 60 miles on I-70 west of Denver before we decided that we were too good for the Interstate again, and turned south on Highway 91 to go down to Leadville, Colorado. It was one of the cool places we'd heard about that we'd never been to. Plus, we'd tried to cross Independance Pass a couple times before, but it had always been closed.

At 12,093 feet, it's the highest paved mountain pass in Colorado, and crosses right under the shadow of Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in Colorado. It was beautiful, but super steep and really scary--I was glad Austin was driving. Something inside of me just has this innate aversion to driving along the edge of cliffs that plunge 100s of feet downward right next to my car. And I actually have a good excuse for not having any pictures here--it was too foggy and rainy for the camera to see anything clearly! But if you ever have the chance to drive over Independance Pass in the summer time when the weather is nice, I recommend it!

After Independance Pass, we dropped down into a little town called Assssss-pen, and then continued on down the familiar path to our old hometown of Paonia. I'll cover that in my next post.

Until then, tarra!