Day -4—Houston, TX to Wichita, KS

I left at 8 am on Monday, intending to meet with Gwyn on Wednesday.  Funny thing about taking Interstates:  they're very fast.  Even with four rest breaks and a gas stop I managed six hundred-something miles in nine hours, way faster than I expected.  At this rate, I'll be in Kansas City tomorrow and have a whole day to hang out with Gwynnie. I accidentally discovered why Beltway 8 gets so easily tied up.  It turns out that several people stop and check the "rejected coin" box, and one person actually fished the drive for rebound coins.

 Day -3—Wichita, KS to Raymore, MO

I drove out of Wichita on the wings of a storm.  For almost a hundred miles, I-35 wove in and out of the eaves of a frontal system.  Finally, the interstate cut away from the Kansas Turnpike and proceeded more or less northwest to Kansas City, leaving the storm behind. I stopped at the Truman/Young Farm National Historical Site at about 11 am.  The farm, in Grandview, Mo., is where President Harry S Truman lived, from the time he was three, until his family moved when he was six.  The original farm house burned down in 1894, and a smaller, "temporary" structure was built on the site.  That was the house I saw.  The garage served for a while as the Grandview, Mo. post office.  I took some pictures, then moved on. I failed to get on to US-71 North into Kansas City and ended up on some back country roads.  I decided to cruise for a while, taking random turns, and eventually ended up on the 435 loop between 35 and 71. I went back to Belton and checked into the Holiday Inn Express.  Even though the check-in time was 3pm (I arrived at 1), the manager very kindly allowed me to check in when I arrived (after ensuring with the cleaning staff that the room was ready).

 Day -2—Kansas City Area

I drove up to Independence to see the Harry Truman Home.  This is a different one from the one I saw yesterday.  Yesterday's Truman Home (farm, actually) was the farm he lived on as a child.  Today's was the home he lived in with his wife, Bess, from the time of their marriage until his death in 1972.  Bess Truman willed the house to the Parks Service when she died in 1982, but not all of it.  Much of the property and contents remain the property of Margaret (at least she had rights to it).  Every thing in the house is exactly the same as it had been on the day they buried Bess Truman (with the obvious exception of food—they removed the food). One of the rangers at the info center had been at the Tall Grass Prairie Park when Donna and I visited in 1999.  We chatted about the park and the buffalo herd there, and about the buffalo herd in Texas that just got moved off a private ranch onto a ridiculously small park. I moved on to the zoo and wandered around there for about an hour.  It was much more enjoyable in the sunshine than it had been in the rain.  The peacocks were out and wandering around; also, a small fmaily of geese had set up shop on one of the greenways (Gwyn later told me that geese were quite the little problem in Kansas City that year).  Near the seals, they had four small pens set up; three of the pens contained large, predatory birds (a condor, an owl, and an eagle), the fourth cage contained a coati, a small mammal weighing about fourteen pounds.  You have to know he was happy. Gwyn was feeling ill when I visited, so my visit was short.

 Day -1—Raymore, MO to Ellis, KS

I woke up this morning to a phone call from Donna—the bedroom at the house was under water. Got back on the road today.  I had 300-odd miles of Interstate driving to cover, so there's not much to talk about.  I did stop in Abilene and looked at the Eisenhower Center.  No real surprises there, but it was interesting, none-the-less. Abilene has built its visitors' center from the old train station where the drovers would get paid after leaving their cattle. [The next morning, at the camp.]  We had a fantastic thunderstorm last night.  There was lightning everywhere and unbelievable winds.  I would have really enjoyed the show were I not in a truck.

 Day 0—Ellis, KS to Denver, CO

There is something sad and marvelous about the Colorado Plains.  Seas of grass are dotted by hills carved from the rock by the wind.  Here and there, dry rivers flow, forgotten by nature except for a few days in the spring when they become raging torrents.  You have to wonder what the pioneers must have thought as they drove their oxen and horses over mile after waterless mile, driving hard from one watering hole or flowing stream to the next. Then, suddenly, you climb over a hill and see the mountains.  You blink, because at first they don't look like mountains at all.  They appear nothing more than oddshaped clouds floating on a smudge on the horizon.  As you draw closer—and remember that the pioneers traveled infinitely more slowly in their wagons—they become more real, acquiring definition and mass, drawing reality from the miles under your feet.  They rise slowly and deliberately until they become an impenetrable wall, a fence to defend the homes of indifferent gods.  You find it difficult to see anything else.  The humble splendor of the rising prairie still surrounds you, but the mountainous glory commands your view, daunting and terrible. The plan was for me to fly to Denver today, saving my vacation time for the body of the trip.  Easier said than done, as it turned out.  The week in Houston started with Tropical Storm Allison and when I left Bush Intercontinental (IAH) (four hours late because of bad weather left over from Allison) I just wanted out.  It didn't matter that on Thursday morning (yesterday) I had to spend the morning dragging a soaked carpet and pad out of the bedroom and onto the street for garbage pick-up.  I just wanted out of the four days of severe storms, and I wanted to see Brett. I was four hours late arriving in Denver because: 1)  The incoming plane to become ours was diverted to Austin because it couldn't land in Houston. 2)  When it finally did arrive, there was a delay in refueling because the fuel guys didn't want to be hit by lightning (unions—go fig) 3)  When we got to the end of the runway, all ready to take off (after 3 hours), the airport was shut down because the air traffic controllers had to be moved—they were flooded out—plus there was too much water on the runway. As a special frosting on the cake, Brett was not allowed to meet me at the gate because the airport closes off the unoccupied areas of the airport at night.

 Day 1—Denver, CO to Jensen, UT

It's Saturday morning in Denver.  We've tried to call Chris and Sheila [dear, wonderful friends of ours who not only keep an eye on our house, but also feed and play with our four neurotic pets], but the phone lines are down.  Tried to call Paul on his cell phone and he's also unavailable.  I'm guessing Paul and the rest of the family won't get to come home today because the airport is probably closed.  [Donna's father, her brother, Paul and his wife and step-children had gone the previous week to Washington and Vancouver and were due home Saturday afternoon.]  Even if they get in, their vehicle in the parking lot is probably flooded out.  This trip is really turning out to live up to its name. We went for Continental Breakfast in the hotel and all they gave was coffee, tea and doughnuts.  We're used to a little more, but this hotel wasn't up to the standards we're used to in other ways, either.  The desk clerk was downright snotty to us during both check-in and check-out.  We did have an interesting time talking to a couple from St. Louis during the "breakfast".  They were in Denver visiting their grandchildren; they said they enjoyed visiting but would never stay. On the road finally, and going straight over the Rockies to Utah.  We almost screwed up and took I-70 instead of US-40.  It probably wouldn't have been a tragedy, but US-40 was where we really wanted to go.  We stopped at Empire, and that's where we realized we hadn't made the cutoff for US-40.  We only went one exit too far, so we turned around and went back.  We spent the early part of the day going back and forth across the Continental Divide.  Once, we stopped and took photos—at the Berthoud Pass Ski Area Info Center—and found out that there had been three car wrecks this morning.  The attendant at the center warned us to be very careful.  We saw the remains of one—a smashed car that had flipped over and the sheriff was measuring skid marks.  We stopped at Steamboat Springs for gas—our first encounter with gas prices over $2.00. Most of the day was spent going through the Arapaho and Raitt National Forests.  The scenery was spectacular.  It was a very long day after a long night.  We were both bushed, but we were able to stay awake long enough to listen to a ranger talk at the campground.  The man doing the talk had researched the life of Earl Douglas, the discoverer of the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument.  He presented the history of this guy [Douglas] in first person and was very interesting to listen to.  By the time he was finished, we were ready to crash. The demarcation between forest and desert is startling up here.  There is no gradual fading as in Texas.  Here, you pass over a hilltop and, suddenly, the trees are gone, the grass is gone, and desert scrub is the rule of the day.  Every so often, a river or a spring brings water to the parched, but otherwise fertile, land, and there cottonwoods and aspen grow and form an oasis of green among the muted blues and browns of the desert. Dinosaur is in the Utah Badlands.  Here, with no covering of trees and grass, or maybe because the stone is softer, the Rocky Mountains have been worn down to little more than hills, and those hills have been sculpted by the winds and rains into high cliffs and buttes, aggressive and imposing ramparts.  If the eastern mountains are the fences of the gods, then these broken crags are the walls of Hell, the boundaries of the damned.

Day 2—Jensen, UT to Salt Lake City, UT

We'll be heading up the hills to the dinosaur quarry today.  I expect it should be interesting.  After that, we go further west before heading up through Idaho.  I have discovered that among my limited allergies, I am allergic to cottonwood pollen and seeds.  This goes along with the whole tree allergy thing I discovered this Spring, through a month of misery caused by the oak pollen plague of Houston. The Dinosaur Quarry was extremely cool.  The wall of fossils was really neat to look at.  We were able to pick out different parts of different dinosaurs, even without the help of the map.  Brett got into a discussion with the ranger about dinosaur coloring.  Apparently, the current school of thought is that dinosaurs were multi-colored, instead of grey or a drab brown.  There's a lifesize stegosaurus outside the building that's painted green, brown, and beige, based on the theory that stegos could stand up on the hind legs and eat from high trees (like giraffes) and the color changes provided camoflage.  Brett discussed the camarosaurus coloring with the ranger and after much disagreement, agreed to disagree. We moved on down the road a couple miles to the Dinosaur Quarry Gift Shop where I wanted Brett to take my picture riding the dinosaur in their parking lot.  As it turned out, this was possibly the greatest gift shop we've ever found near a park.  The selection was mindboggling and the prices were very reasonable.  Oh, and the photo-op dinosaur has a western saddle and sound effects whe yousit in the saddle.  That cracked me up! On down the road further to Vernal, UT, the home of the Utah Field House of Natural History and its Dinosaur Garden.  Very nice display in a lovely setting.  Also, some good taxidermy of the wildlife in the area and some good native american (UTE) history.  We got talking to the gift shop lady about Wells Fargo Bank because Brett asked where the nearest ATM was.  Boy, did we get an earful!  Oh, and Vernal had these two cartoon-looking dinosaurs on either end of town.  Dinosaurs are big business around here. Our next stop was lunch in Roosevelt at Kody's Roundup Cafe.  Good and plentiful food.  An interesting mix of people here.  We didn't stop again until Heber City - for gas.  The prices were back down to Houston prices ($1.75 or so).  As we left there, the highway went up alongside a reservoir where you could see the dam - right outside of Heber City.  The water was about 10 feet away from the top and there was a small gathering of homes in the shadow of the dam.  I thought those must be very brave or very stupid people to build there. We kind of blew through Salt Lake City, but I could see the Capitol Dome and the Mormon Temple from the highway.  Great white buildings that stood out from everything surrounding them.  We took the causeway over to Antelope Island State Park to see where we'd be staying for the night.  The causeway and the marina area held the smell of the ocean, but without the dead fish.  That's still not a pleasant smell and there were places where I could swear I smelled dead clams.  Yuk!  Thank goodness the campsite is up on the hill, well away from the water.  The ranger asked if we wanted to switch to something closer.  We both practically shouted, "No!". We took some time to drive around the park since there is no shade and it was still pretty hot.  We also walked down to the water's edge and were amazed by the millions (literally) of insects that inhabit the water's edge, presumably feeding on the algae (or whatever it was) growing just under the water.  It's gonna be cold tonight, once the sun sets.  Brrr!  Good, because we were hot last night - until about midnight. A couple pulled into the campground last night, just before dark and left before midnight, after walking well away from the campground.  As far as we can tell, they only came for Wilderness Sex.

Day 3—Salt Lake City, UT to Idaho Falls, ID

I would be remiss if I left the Great Salt Lake area and did not mention the sand.  The sand is fantastic, fine and powdery like flour, it flows and drifts everywhere near the water.  I think there is some quality in this sand that prevents it holding water.  It doesn't clump on your feet when you walk through it wet, and although this may have more to do with a lack of tides, there is only a very small line of packed sand on the beach. I should also mention the fabulous sunset last night.  If I only have two great memories of last night, they will be sand and sunset. Idahoans are friendly and solicitous in a way that Utahns try to emulate (but fail) and Coloradoans wouldn't even waste the time to give lip service to.  Besides the concierge mentioned in our hotel review, the waitresses and host in the restaurant went out of their way to ensure that our meal was enjoyable.  It's even a different kind of friendliness than you get in Houston.  These people seem friendly and nice for their own sake and you don't feel obligated by convention to be friendly back.  I'm explaining this wrong.  Come up here sometime and you'll see what I mean. Oh, the manager of the restaurant was sitting around on his day off, bragging about his golf game that afternoon to a bunch of employees.  He claimed to have hit a 350 yard drive, followed by a 270 yard 3-wood approach.  At 620 yards, that must have been the longest Par 5 in the universe.  [We later learned, from Donna's father, that 620 yards is not that long for a Par 5 and that the pros are hitting 350 yard drives all the time these days.] The dinner was a delicious cap to an interesting day.  We set out from Antelope Island and stopped in Ogden to find a visitor's center that had info about Antelope Island and the Great Salt Lake (for the scrapbook).  Ogden's old town, formerly filled with brothels and gambling parlors, galore, is in the process of being transformed into a trendy street filled with antique shops and restaurants.  Just in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics!  There was, apparently, a personnel crisis at the Visitor's Center, as we witnessed a conversation between the "boss" and a couple of employees who had been drafted to fill in.  We went up the road to US 89 to take a scenic drive through the Wasatch-Cashe National Forest to Logan Canyon and out the other side to Bear Lake, which straddles the Utah-Idaho border.  We stopped three or four times on that drive because it was so beautiful and had interesting side-outs.  One of the places we passed a high speed was a field, just past Rick's Springs.  It was Rick's Springs Field. We came down from the mountains into Garden City at Bear Lake, where we stopped at the Visitor's Center.  Here we spoke with a woman who had grown up around there, married and moved, lost her husband, and returned.  She was telling us a great story about locals deciding to haul gravel over to their side of the lake via boats tied together.  Unfortunately, the end boat had been overloaded and started to sink, taking the rest with it.  Luckily, they got help in time, dumped some of the gravel and were able to save the boats. Oh, and they had just moved the Visitor's Center to a brand new building, off Main Street, and boy, she was NOT impressed with the move. The rest of the drive from Bear Lake down to Idaho Springs was visually not that impressive, but somehow, still pleasing.  Rolling farmland spread for miles and miles, with the mountains on the East and West off in the distance.  We saw Zimmatics, Valleys, and Rain Rats (see Donna Found A Penny Tour). Once we crossed into Idaho, the general attitude of the people changed tremendously.  The Utahns were rushed, perfunctory and almost rude - for the most part.  The Idahoans projected a much friendlier and warm personality.  Our hotel tonight, in Idaho Falls, serves milk and fresh baked, hot cookies at 8pm each night.  Our concierge was extremely helpful and even offered to call ahead to a particular restaurant if we wanted to dine there because they'd let us in if she called.  Is that cool or what? I cannot finish this days writing without mentioning the Idaho Potato Expo in Blackfoot.  Housed in the former railway station, this museum to the potato looked like a high school social studies project gone ape.  It was charming, as was the young lady who,  in her goth-wanna-be look, wanted desperately to get out of this town that was, as she said, "Completely surrounded by potato farms".  The young always want to get out of and the old always want to come back to a place like Blackfoot or Pocatello or Idaho Falls.

Day 4—Idaho Falls, ID to Butte, MT

We started the day by drifting down to the falls at Idaho Falls.  It was cool, but there was a bitter wind that made it cold.  We wandered around the Falls a bit, then went to the Visitor's Center where we got the idea to stop by the Spencer Opal Mine.  We didn't actually go to the mines;  they didn't give tours.  They did, however, allow you to dig all day for $25.  We didn't feel like digging (even though you get to keep your first ten pounds, but we did find some nice trinkets in their shop.  We drove up to the US Sheep Experimental Station for a look, but all we saw were horses. [They may have been sheep.  We don't know.  It WAS an experimental station.]  I-15 climbed up out of the Snake River Valley and passed over the Merita Pass into Montana.  Some miles off the highway, we came to Bannock.  Bannock used to be a thriving mining town.  Bannock used to be the territorial capital.  Bannock IS a ghost town.  It was abandoned in the 1940's, but the former residents loved and respected it enough to collect the land and donate it to the state.  Now it sits in its own state park.  Now even the ghosts are gone and it is nothing more than a museum, 30-odd buildings rotting into a mountain valley, a dying monument to the capriciousness of man. As we left Bannock, it started to snow.  The snow mixed with sleet and rain and followed us north to Butte.  It's still snowing now, though none of it has stuck to the ground here in the city.  The hills are covered, though, and the minute-forecasts on the news teasers suggest that people get their shovels ready for tomorrow. It's after 1 in the morning and it's still snowing.  The snow covers the ground and is encroaching on the road.  There is something pure and beautiful about a nighttime snow.  The flakes fall in silent order through the halos of light and little by little, the world begins to glow. Even if you don't get to see the snow fall during the night, when you wake in the morning, the world is covered by a pure white blanket.  Even if it melts before the afternoon, you've had that one moment of purity and the whole day is washed in its glory.

Day 5—Butte, MT to Billings, MT

It's around 7am and the countryside is covered by a light blanket of snow.  Although the concrete areas are clear, and the rocky areas only look like they've been dusted by powdered sugar.  I can tell it's not going to last long, though, because it's a very heavy, wet snow.  Every minute or so, a chunk will fall off the roof to the ground.  It's sort of unnerving.  Some of the chunks are body-sized and it looks like someone fell off the roof as it streaks by. We'll probably spend another night here and wander through Wyoming tomorrow.  There's plenty to see in Butte, so I think we'll take advantage of this and poke around.  It is still snowing, but as the day comes and it warms up, I think it will turn to rain. The forecast called for more snow throughout the day for the mountain passes around Butte and they had already closed all but one of the lesser roads into Yellowstone, so we decided to go on to Billings where the forecast was less severe - while we had the chance.  Before we left, however, we decided to stop by the Brothel Museum in Butte.  It was closed and we later learned that the gentleman who owned it had run out of money and was trying to sell it.  The building is on the National Registry of Historic Places, which limits the uses of registered buildings and has strict regulations as to what can be done to them in the name of renovation, so it may be a hard sell for him. We left Butte behind on I-90 via the Homesteake Pass and returned to Atlantic waters.  The snow tapered off as we descended the pass into the Missouri River Valley, until all that was left as evidence of last night's storm was a few scattered piles of slush and a little white on the higher hills. Despite the scarcity of snow, Missouri Headwaters State Park was wet and miserably cold.  I was unfair to Donna, calling her a 'cold- wuss' and expressing her intolerance to low temperatures.  Nonetheless, we got some nice pictures of the terrain and the river junction that the US Geological Survey has determined forms the head of the Missouri River. After Missouri Headwaters, we stopped at the Three Forks Visitor's Center and had a quick talk with the greeter there.  We also met a fascinating and fun couple on their way from their winter home in Florida to their summer home in Connecticut.  Obviously, they were taking the scenic route. The snow returned as we climbed to the Bozeman Pass, but shortly after we traveled through the city and its pass, it tapered off and disappeared entirely.  The cold and rain staying with us, however, and as we made our way through the foothills to Billings, a cold drizzle torn by occasional biting winds accompanied us. The day was short, but interesting nonetheless.  The Missouri Headwaters State Park was pretty, even in the bad weather, and I regretted that we weren't able to enjoy it more.  This is where I had originally hoped to spend the night.  We had quite a long talk with the Three Forks Visitor's Center attendant and the couple from Connecticut.  We also stopped at a rest area to "rest", but were unable to get a drink of water.  Apparently, the local township had not been taking care of the water and it was unsafe to drink.  You think of this part of the country as having crystal clear streams and pure air, but here, as in much of the country, we have managed - mostly through carelessness and neglect - to soil our surroundings.  Up here, however, the damage is probably not as bad as around Houston. Tomorrow we'll be heading south, mostly, through the northern part of Wyoming.  I'm looking forward to better weather.  The rain and snow was pretty on the hillsides, but the long distance visibility was poor and, to tell the truth, it's the vistas that make this part of the country impressive. Oh, and this morning, we ran into a truckload of Texans from Austin who own land up here in Montana.  I guess they make the trek every year to stay up here for a while.  Apparently, they found their land via the Internet.

Day 6—Billings, MT to Sheridan, WY

The breakfast here at the Comfort Inn has biscuits and gravy - Yum!  The sun is mostly back and the rain looks like it's stopped.  We'll probably run into a little as we go south.  I think that's where the storm was moving. On a whim, we decided to go to Pictograph Caves, in the park was on the way to Chief Plenty Coups State Park, which was one of our actual targets.  Near an antenna farm, the road was blocked by a small crew of men moving a spool of cable by crane.  We weren't sure what they were doing, although Donna suggested they were setting up the park rangers with HBO. Today was 'History Day'.  We stopped at Pictograph Caves National Historic Site.  That was a beautiful spot.  Nestled in the curve of the Bitter Creek Valley, the sandstone rimrock stood out tall and rugged.  The caves were more like overhangs and only one of them had pictographs.  Apparently, it has yielded quite the number of artifacts from ancient wandering tribes - ancestors of the area's native american population.  There was a particularly interesting-looking formation in the rimrock sandstone called concretions that caused huge boulders to be deposited in a horizontal line all around the curve of the rimrock.  It looked like somebody had pushed huge pearls into wet mud and let it dry.  The formations are formed, kind of like pearls, too, where clumps of organics settled to the sea bottom and their minerals coalesced into these boulders in the middle of the sandstone. Our next stop was Chief Plenty Coups National Historic Site.  This Crow Chief was quite the man.  He had a vision of the white man's eventual dominance and led his people through the transition process with grace, dignity, and diplomacy.  He instinctively knew that education was their best method of making themselves equal in white men's eyes and he became, basically, the native american representative/ambassador to the United States. Our last major stop was at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  We listened to two different ranger talks, both of which were extremely interesting.  The battlefield is in rolling hills which kind of hide you over the next ridge.  There's not really one place where you can see what's going on.  It started raining in earnest and it was about 4pm when we finished with the ranger talks, so we opted not to drive through the battlefield.  I don't think it would have given us any more of a sense of the place anyway. We headed on south to Sheridan, Wyoming, a smallish town with a vibrant economy - or so it seemed.  We checked into a hotel, then I made Brett go back downtown to walk Main Street.  We found the movie theater and decided to take advantage of their Thursday night two-fer and saw Evolution.  The mix of people in the theater was mostly college-age people, I think.  Brett mentioned that there were a lot of women who looked like they listened to folk music.  I had to agree with him that there was a feeling of that.

Day 7—Sheridan, WY to Cheyenne, WY

Today was a long drive, relatively speaking.  It didn't rain on us, but the wind made it hard to keep the truck on the road.  We broke up the trip into 1.5 hour segments, which made the drive go faster.  Our first stop was a rest area in Wyoming that is completely solar-powered.  It uses both active and passive solar power to light, heat and cool the building and to heat the water for the bathrooms.  There was also a group of signs at the foot of the road that gave directions and distance to the area's inhabitants. [By which we mean, individuals, as in "Smiths - 5 mi N"] Our second stop was Glen Rocks.  A pretty little town where I found some pottery in a convenience store, which looked to be made locally.  We only passed through briefly, but it was much nicer than either Sheridan or Casper. We stopped one last time before our overnight at Guernsey State Park.  It's an older park, with facilities and a museum built by the CCC back in the '30's.  It's all wood and stone structure with that '30's feel to it.  The museum's displays were original equipment, as well, which was double interesting.  We found out that the North Platte River does not have a corresponding South Platte River - at least not in the immediate vicinity.  There's also a dam in the park, which you drive across, that was built in 1925.  The whole park had this really retro feel, just like when I remember going camping in national parks as a kid. We got into Cheyenne early, so we parked downtown and wandered around the center of town and did some shopping.  That was fun, especially when we stumbled across the local Goodwill Store and this other shop which was kind of like Spencer's Gifts - only more upscale.  [By which we mean, far fewer fart-related products and almost no sexually-oriented gifts and jokes.] There are an amazing number of beautiful buildings in historic Cheyenne.  Even the train station is a work of art with its red and beige pattern in the brick and its clocktower. We checked into the bed and breakfast and were not disappointed.  It was a really lovely house, furnished with imagination and the flavor of Wyoming.  The hosts, Chuck and Fern, are gracious and helpful and took quite a lot of time to show us around so that we'd feel comfortable.  Chuck trains bird dogs, mostly yellow labs, and they are all housed out back.  Brett and I took some time after we went to eat dinner to visit all the dogs and to pet everyone individually.  It was great, just like home - only more so. The most striking thing about today was the number of deer and antelope we saw along the interstate.  I don't think we went more than 15 or 20 seconds between sightings until we got south of Guernsey.  We saw adults, juveniles, fawns, and a couple of males butting heads and pushing against each other, vying for dominance and a chance to mate.

Day 8—Cheyenne, WY to Denver, CO

This was our shortest day for driving, as we only had to do 100 miles.  We only stopped once at a rest stop to change drivers because I was so groggy from the Benadryl I took that I was scared to continue driving.  As we approached Denver, Brett observed that Denver drivers, in general, are incapable of merging and exiting from the freeway in a sane manner.  We pulled over to call my friend, Kim, who lives in the area.  I took over the driving from there. We met Kim for lunch and she took us to a little place downtown called the Wazee Supper Club.  We had buffalo burgers.  Kim had a great-looking pizza.  Buffalo burgers are 90% fat free and, as Kim remarked, the fat is what makes a burger good.  We have to agree.  It wasn't bad.  It just wasn't juicy and good. We left Kim to continue her day and headed over the the Hammond Candy Factory for a tour.  Unfortunately, since it wasn't Monday through Friday, there were no tours scheduled.  We debated going over to Boulder to the Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory, but decided tea wasn't worth the drive.  At this point, the tea and the beer had created the need for a bathroom, so we drove toward Aurora (a suburb of Denver) to one of the six Current Greeting Card outlets.  We spent some time there buying a few trinkets for cheap and proceeded out towards the airport to find a La Quinta for Brett, tonight. I get to leave for home, via air, at 7pm and Brett has to drive back to Houston by his lonesome, tomorrow. I've enjoyed this trip a lot;  however, I'm ready to go home to the pets and my own bed.  Also, I'm either highly allergic to something (probably) or I've developed a head cold (more likely) and I want to be home if I'm going to be sick.

Day +1—Denver, CO to Denton, TX

I set out at 7am after drinking a glass of OJ in the hotel.  I blew through Oklahoma and Kansas with only absolutely necessary stops.  Stopped at the Oklahoma Welcome Center, but she was on the phone.  (Turns out that Cindy, my sister, had called while we were away and was worried.)  Climbing down the Ardmore Mts, in Oklahoma, I realized why I was just going on:  I was homesick and I wanted to be home. I called Donna again from the Texas Welcome Center, in Gainesville, and this time, got through.  Donna suggested I lay up there at the Best Western, but I wanted to get as much mileage between Patty and I as possible, so I came down to Denton.

Day +2—Denton, TX to Houston, TX

[On Day 2, I blew through the rest of the way home and crashed on the sofa to make up for the sleep I'd lost the previous day.]