“We’re on our way home…” October 31, 2011

Yesterday we started our big push for the drive home.  I wanted to see the Sandia Crest and to drive the Turquoise Trail from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.  It was my turn to drive and it was an exciting drive up through the mountain pass.  When we reached the peak (over 10,000 feet) we were so excited with the views.  We took lots of pictures (a few are here) but I cannot say we were breathless with excitement because we were breathless due to lack of oxygen!  The view was worth the exciting, twisty drive up.  We went into the gift shop, purchased some souvenirs, and I saw my favorite T-shirt of the whole trip.  The shirt had a picture of several native Americans on horseback with weapons.  The caption read, “Homeland Security: fighting terrorism since 1492.”  Loved it.

We rejoined I-25 north at Santa Fe and continued up into Colorado.  We stopped for the night in Colorado Springs.  I was driving as we passed the state line and Dennis got the “welcome to Colorado” picture.  I commented earlier on the beauty of I-25 and Colorado gave me another chance to see the beauty of the highway.  Once we reached Colorado, we dove down steep mountain roads complete with twists and turns and trucks screaming down the road next to us.  Very exciting!  The mountains here are the Rockies – and the Anheuser Busch label does not do them justice!  The Rocky Mountains are so different from all the other mountain chains we have seen on this trip.  They are so high and topped with snow – I kept looking and thinking – “is that real or is it a picture?”

In the morning we left Colorado Springs and headed to Denver to move on to I-76 into the northeast corner of Colorado.  We drove across a lot of prairie land once we turned away from the mountains.  The land was gently rolling and all the same color – burnt grass – with no outstanding features.  It was hard to focus sometimes, but we kept track of our path and our miles traveled. 

We crossed the state line into Nebraska and merged on to I-80 east.  I was not expecting to find Nebraska very interesting.  I-80 traverses the entire state and I was expecting wheat and corn fields.  We found water – for the first time in several days we saw water along the road and some trees.  We also saw lots of cows and farms, but it was nice to see trees and water again.  We stopped at Grand Island, Nebraska for the night and tomorrow we will drive on into Iowa.