Day 2

“Just driving today” is probably not a phrase I’ll be using again. Less eventful? Nope!

We left the Amarillo KOA at about 10-ish, I think. The highway from there to Colorado winds through a lot of small towns, a lot of slowdowns, and it’s not terribly exciting, which wasn’t bad because Jeff, Jaden, and Aspen crashed as soon as we started driving. Leaving Amarillo and driving through the rolling hills, scattered plateaus, scrubby sagebrush, and the occasional irrigation circle made me feel like I was in eastern Washington again. The landscape was nearly identical to the farmland area where my mom lives. I cranked up my music and drove for quite a while, while everyone else slept.

We cut across the corner of New Mexico on our way to hit 25 North to Colorado. Kids stayed asleep, and we passed through in about an hour or so. Aspen woke up and asked, “Are we at our buhcation yet?” When I said yes, her next question was, “Can we go back to our other campsite?” I laughed, but she really didn’t understand that we’d be staying in a different place pretty much every night!

Once we crossed into Colorado, we could see quite a few scattered rainstorms ahead of us. At first it was kind of cool just to watch the lightning, but pretty soon we realized we’d be driving straight into one of them. That’s where our boring day ended! The rain came down pretty hard, which wasn’t unusual for us since Dallas thunderstorms can pour buckets and then some. After a few minutes, though, I noticed some white spots on the road. Before I could finish the sentence “Why is the road white?” we were being pounded with hail. The hail was so heavy and loud in the car that Jeff and I had to shout to hear each other. Since we were in the middle of a mountain road, there was no place to pull over, but I could only see about 30 yards in front of me so progress was reeeeally slow. We drove like that, yelling back and forth and me staring at the road so hard my eyes hurt, for what seemed like half an hour, but it was really only about ten minutes. Honestly, I think that was more of an adrenaline rush than any roller coaster I’ve been on in a long time! Amazingly enough, there are no visible dents on the Sprinter. How that happened I have no clue, since the hail was nickel-sized at least, and so much came down that in places it looked like it had snowed.

After Jeff woke up and we’d switched drivers, we had a long debate about camping vs. staying in a hotel. Since the forecast called for scattered thunderstorms and a 50% chance of rain, I was less than thrilled with the idea of being in a tent. Jeff was concerned about how much a hotel room would cost us for two nights (understandably so, since a few phone calls put our 2-night stay at $200-350). An interesting discussion ensued, since I was a bit steamed that we could afford a new grill we didn’t really need but not a hotel that we might, but we finally decided to just head to the campground and pray that we’d stay dry. We ended up at Eleven Mile State Park, which is about 20 minutes from the Boy Scout camp where Andrew is. (NOTE TO SELF: Always make weather contingency plans ahead of time, so there isn’t an argument when the situation arises!)

It was just getting dark when we set up camp in a big open spot at the top of the hill overlooking Eleven Mile Reservoir. It's very picturesque here! I took pictures of the kids rock-climbing and the sun setting on the lake, but I probably won’t be able to upload pictures until we get to my sister’s house in a week or so.

DAY 2: 405 miles today.