Over one week of junctions

I began my day in Aurora 5,471 feet above sea level and I'm now ending it in Grand Junction 4,597 feet above sea level. On net I lost about 900 feet. This does not quite tell the whole story. The whole story requires you to know that in between these two cities I passed through Alma, a town of less than two hundred people which is 10,578 feet above sea level. Yes, kids, I crossed the Continental Divide today. Don't think I didn't notice!

Unfortunately, prose is unable to convey the impossibility of the peaks and canyons of the Colorado Rockies to anyone who hasn't been there. Pictures are only slightly better. Lost in clouds though they were on this overcast day, the Rockies captured my eyes whenever I could spare them a glance as I navigated the winding roads. Poor Blackbird couldn't figure out where all the air went and had trouble maintaining her speed on the hills. She'll be happier in California. I don't have many stories from today, as rain limited my outdoor activities and the Rockies don't have a lot of indoor ones, but I do have pictures dating back to Paducah...

My room in Paducah, the first hotel room of the journey. Kazuko reclines on the bed at right. This seems like a really long time ago. I don't have any good pictures of the city.

Tunnel Hill in south Illinois. Longer and mistier than it looks. I also have a picture taken from inside the tunnel; all you can see is mist and some light at the other end.

Independence Temple's spire. The temple is the site of Jesus's Second Coming according to the Mormons. They may not believe in evolution, but I guess they believe in architecture. Magnificent.

A rose from the garden across from Jacob's flat in Kansas City. Jacob taught me how to use my camera's close-focus feature. It's the button that looks like a flower, appropriately enough.

A very relaxed raccoon at the zoo in Oakley, Kansas. He probably wanted to be asleep, but tourists like me kept interrupting him.

This prairie dog, on the other hand, was bright and alert, as were his hundreds of cousins swarming the zoo!

Wiley's mother tends her lake garden in Aurora, minutes after being terrified by a snake. The native snakes are apparently eating her fish. It's a dilemma.

We close with three views of the Rocky Mountains.

From Panorama Point on the Denver side.

From Colorado Route 9 in the midst of the Continental Divide.

From Grand Junction on the west side, where the mountains have given way to mesas and the West proper has begun.

I have plenty more photos, but these tell the story as well as any ten photos can. Time will tell what I photograph tomorrow on my Sunday pilgrimage to Salt Lake City!

Life at altitude

After a second day in Aurora, Colorado, I once again greet the evening exhausted but full of life. I've stayed both days with Wiley and her family -- who, along with my previous hosts Jacob, Zach, and Alex, must be some of the best and most generous hosts in America -- and will forge west tomorrow morning with fond memories of the Mile High City.

The days here seem to blur together, as my head is fuzzy from fatigue and altitude, but I remember a lot of words. I've had plentiful and often hilarious conversations with Wiley's clan about topics ranging from tomatoes to economics to charismatic megafauna. I've heard stories about tornado chasing in Denver, President Clinton's personal troll doll in Washington, and signs informing tourists what to do if you encounter a cow in Switzerland. We had conversations over dinner last night at a charming local Persian restaurant whose combination lamb and beef patties were new to me, over Wiley's mother's koi pond this morning as she recovered from being attacked by a vicious garter snake, and over lunch today at a Boulder tea house imported piece by piece from Tajikistan.

I've also learned many things about life in the mountains -- some from the family, others from direct experience. Most of the direct-experience items have to do with the atmosphere of a town a mile in the air. For one thing, I've spent much of my time here suffering from airplane ear from climbing and descending the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. For another, the lack of air means Aurora is far cooler and less humid than Kansas City; Wiley tells me that every thousand feet of altitude means the temperature drops three degrees. Yet in spite of the cool air, it's easier to get sunburned or dehydrated here; less air between us and the sun means that everything the sun does in Florida it does better in Colorado. I learned this firsthand as Wiley and I walked a 2.5-mile path in Golden Gate Canyon State Park outside Boulder after a dizzying climb to nine thousand feet that Blackbird struggled to surmount. I'll eventually post photos, but as usual they will be a pale imitation of the wonders that are the Continental Divide and mountain creeks and aspen groves. There was a fifteen-degree difference between sunlight and shade, and my water vanished quickly as we trod the steep paths alert for mountain lions or grizzly bears. (No "charismatic megafauna" was in evidence on the trail, but we saw some awkward and cute mule deer from the car.) The hike was the defining moment of my time near Denver, the part that made me understand how everyday life here is different from life in Fort Myers.

There is of course so much more to say, but I can never say it all and I have to hit the hay now so that I can hit the road later. Tomorrow I detour from the interstate along a circuitous route recommended by Wiley's mother. I'll get a king's view of the mountains and visit the highest incorporated town in the lower 48 states. I hope to blog next from Grand Junction, Colorado, near the western border of the state. Until then!

I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore

This post comes to you from Aurora, Colorado, just outside Denver. My hostesses this evening are my college friend Wiley and her mother, who -- like all my hosts so far without exception -- have been wonderful to me and ready to help in any way they can. In fact, I'm going to stay with them tomorrow night as well. This traveling has left me breathless! I need a one-day "weekend" when I don't have to drive five hours and can just recover from my adventures so far, and tomorrow is it. I expect I'll still be blogging, though.

Today started way back in Hays. I ate a continental breakfast of oatmeal and then set out for Fort Hays to see if I could uncover the reason a town of 20,000 grew up in rural Kansas so far from a large city. My instinct was borne out on this one! It turns out the town grew up around the fort, as the wives and children of the officers and enlisted men tried to carve lives for themselves out of what was then (in the barely postbellum United States) the frontier. The fort in turn was established as a staging area to protect the railroads from Indian raids. It was named after General Alexander Hays, a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg recently dead at the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness. The tour of the fort was itself interesting -- it was much, much better to be an officer than an enlisted man, by the way -- but the reason it will stick in my memory was that a very old stranger from the Wichita area who I hadn't even spoken to went ahead and paid my $3 admission without so much as asking first. We chatted during the tour. He's a pleasant guy who seemed like he would really rather be sitting in an armchair than taking a walking tour, but he was in good humor. He left a big stack of printed cards under my windshield wiper evangelizing the Gospel of Matthew -- a stack that I've duly put in the souvenir bin to remind me of him and the fort.

In between Hays and Aurora I was intrigued by roadway signs advertising the "world's largest prairie dog" and various other prairie animals. On their cue I pulled over in a tiny town that turned out to be Oakley, Kansas. The zoo there was full of native fauna -- coyotes, foxes, buffalo, rattlesnakes -- and the kicker was that it was built atop a live prairie dog town. The whole grounds were studded with holes that prairie dogs darted in and out of constantly. They are adorable creatures. (The "world's largest" is a six-foot plastic molding of a prairie dog in the back of the zoo.) I was a little worried about whether the animals were well cared for in this fairly primitive roadside facility, but I didn't let it stop me from enjoying my first sight of many of these animals. Afterward I went across the street and lunched at a surprisingly yummy buffet before getting back on the road.

I'm not ready to write about Aurora yet, though there's plenty to say! I'm tired and need to go to bed. What I can say is that one's first sight of the Rocky Mountains as one approaches over the eastern Colorado hills -- when you first become sure that what you're seeing are snow-capped peaks and not low-hanging clouds -- is magical and nearly traffic-stopping. This first sight was another milestone on the journey, one more reminder that I'm far from home with no way of getting back but to drive myself and with every intention of venturing further still!