Monday, June 30, 2008

Farewell for now...

And so we arrived home safely on Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm.

That's how the story ended...here are the gaps filled in...

We left Pagosa about 9 on Friday morning.  First, we headed over to the boys condo (a Peregrine unit B-side) to take pictures of it while it was semi-clean.  Then returned a movie, turned in our card keys, washed the winshield, refilled our gallon jugs of water - and then, we were off.

It was a hot drive on a hot day across Southern Colorado - we took Highway 160 over to Walsenburg.  We arrived in Colorado Springs in need of some air conditioning - but were too early to check into the hotel (a new trend we're running into on this trip - no rooms even available until after 3).  We already had a plan B in mind - to go to a movie.  So we hit the Cinemark Imax theater and saw Kung Fu Panda.  Unfortunately - the A/C wasn't that cool in the theater (but the lobby was) - and the movie was OK but nothing to write home about.  But we were thankful for the break from the heat and noise (windows open at 75 mph = loud!)

After the movie - we checked into the Extended Stay Suites hotel.  We cranked the A/C in our room and it was nice.  We stopped in Colo Springs (barely 5 hours on our way home) to rendezvous with Zech Roloff - a cadet at the Air Force Academy there.  We had supper with him and hung around until about 10 PM when we took him back to the base.  

Saturday was our long driving day - so we tried to get out early (about 7:30) and made our way from Colo Spgs (as all the road signs say) to Grand Island, NE.  Another hot and windy trek that ended up at a nice little Rodeway Inn that was very eager to make their guests happy.  Nice little lake out back with a beach and patio.  Very impressive.

Amy and I went out to eat at Red Lobster - and she got to try the winning recipe from "America's Next Food Network Star".  It was unique and pretty tasty.  

We finished the trek on Sunday heading north from Grand Island to Watertown.  We went through Yankton again and got to cross over the dam in a detour as well.  A pretty diversion in the daylight (this time).

And so we bid you farewell for now from vacation-land...back to reality!

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