Days 16-19
Beginning day sixteen, we checked out, and yes, we ate breakfast at Denny’s. From here we headed south through the center of Colorado on what would be the longest single day’s drive of our trip; 843 miles. Short on time and with the excess of scenery, I had to be very selective of when I stopped to take pictures. We rolled through Walden and Kremmling, by passed Silverthorne and Vail, and didn’t even blink an eye as we drove through Leadville, home of the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown.
Blew through Buena Vista and Alamosa while seeing the Great Sand Dunes far to the east at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We followed US highway 285 down to Santa Fe, then grabbed Interstate 25 and got through Albuquerque before sunset. We stopped for fuel in Los Lunas where I graduated high school and the building does not look the same. Three hours later we arrived in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where we got a room for the night.
Day seventeen started out as….you guessed it, with a Denny’s breakfast and Starbuck’s vente mocha. Headed east over the mountains, we dropped down into the White Sands National Park. We stopped played in the sand, hiked a little, and took lots of pics. But seventeen days into this trip, the girl’s patience with me and my camera grew short. After a few hours they were ready to go. So, once back on the road, we headed east over the mountains. We through Artesia, another childhood home; across the New Mexico desert plains with oil field pumpjacks as far as the eye could see. A little while later into Texas with growing anticipation of home just over the horizon. A couple hours later we arrived in Sweetwater, the self-proclaimed Wind Turbine Capital of the world, and all around were wind mills welcoming us to west Texas.
We stopped to spend day eighteen, visiting my mom and as always. I drove around looking for unique pics and something that might inspire my creativity. On the morning of day nineteen we gave hugs and said our goodbyes to mom. A few hours later, we returned home to Oklahoma and the dogs. Over 3500 miles traveled, nineteen days later, exhausted and tired, we arrived home. We returned with thousands of pics, hundreds of memories which will last a lifetime, and dozens of travel lessons learned. But, no bears.
