We Made It! Cross-Country Trip (Post 3): Through Colorado

November 29, 2015 Vicki Leave a comment

Thanks again to all of you who liked my first cross-country road trip posts! This one has taken me tooo long to get out because–and if you read my blog you won’t be surprised–Fallout 4 came out and I’ve been pretty absorbed in it. In any case, for those who didn’t see my first cross-country trip post, here’s the series intro:

Hello from A MUCH BETTER PLACE than where I, and my family, had lived! I wrote earlier about our experience in trying to buy a home from thousands of miles away, but now we’ve arrived (in Michigan from Southern California, if you must know)! I’m not here today to discuss our property or the process in obtaining it, but to relay some photos and comments about our trip as well as a bit about the area we now live in. This is the first post in a series, and I promise, I’ll try not to be long-winded. I simply hope you enjoy the photos and any funny or interesting things that I can share.

Last time, we left off entering Colorado, staying the night in Grand Junction. Seeing as my son’s initial excitement over a cross-country trip was subsiding (the realization that it takes a good deal of time going through a lot of photos dawned on him, too), I have fewer photos to choose from for the remainder of this series. I have virtually none from the day we went through Colorado when my son wasn’t feeling well. BUT, I’m not going to let the small personal photo sample stop me.

We took the I-70 and the I-76 through Colorado, and while the I-70 was very scenic in parts, the I-76 is a fairly boring plain. In high contrast, a pocket of garishly large resort developments was seen along one freeway, and then, flat fields of tall grasses. The I-70 crosses the Rocky Mountains. Since we don’t have photos of this area, I searched for some to share with you. A lot of folks think the video of Glenwood Canyon below is pretty amazing, so it’s a good one if you want to see this area of the United States (we are not related to the person who makes these highway videos).

The part of the I-70 through Glenwood Canyon that is multi-level was under construction when we went through, making it slow. But I have to hand it to the road engineers and workers–constructing a multi-level freeway through the narrow and curvy areas there cannot have been at all easy. I don’t know what they were doing this year, but it looked like they were changing or expanding the lanes in this difficult area. According to Wikipedia, this stretch of the freeway is (or “was,” as they worded it) considered an engineering marvel, having been completed in 1992.

Glenwood Canyon I-70 — Glenwood Canyon, I-70, by Macksnack.com.

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Glenwood Cyn, I-70, Colorado — Glenwood Canyon, I-70, Colorado, by mesalek.com.

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In comparison, northeast of Denver it looks like this:

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A taco bell and weed image found on Google images, from a pinterest page (you must have an pinterest account to view it).

What I’m bummed about is that we didn’t note or take a photo of a certain exit in Colorado. Why am I bummed? Because it was so funny that it was a “middle of nowhere” kind-of place that had an old looking marijuana dispensary and a new Taco Bell. Otherwise, there was a closed truck weigh station and a gas station there. The funny part, if you don’t know, is the Marijuana + Taco Bell connection. Taco Bell thought the connection good enough to open a new restaurant there, where there’s literally nothing else going on but a gas station. I tried finding it on Google, but haven’t had any luck. I tried to check at Taco Bell’s own website, but the web master for them must be high, too, since I can’t get the full page to load. So . . . If I determine the exact exit using another source, I’ll let you know.

Before entering Nebraska, we stopped at the Julesburg rest stop, which is also a Colorado Welcome Center. It’s really nice, with a public art piece actually worth looking at!