Elevation of feet above sea level, that is! That’s quite a climb.

We have arrived at our final destination tonight. You could say we “just blew in” because the wind was ever present again today. But instead of pushing us along toward our goal, it was trying to blow us off course. Ugh. I. hate. wind.

Despite the wind’s efforts, we arrived in Laramie around noon and after minimal grocery shopping, headed out about 1:00 from Laramie to the cabin.

Here is the main road once you leave the pavement:





Free range, dude!






Of course, as predicted, our internet would not connect. sigh. Rick spent a good hour on the cell phone, standing outside to get a signal to figure out the problem. We have a flex program where we can deactivate it without canceling our service: six months on; six months off. Apparently when we turn it off once we leave the cabin and unplug the modem, it loses its brain and when we plug it back it it resets to a default thereby losing all our information and settings. Hopefully now we have it figured out for the next time this happens. Even though we have to pay for six months while only using two to three weeks of that, it’s worth it to us to stay connected.

Here are a few photos off my “new” camera of our journey today.

Finally, my pic of the sun coming up.





Sign at a rest stop almost to the Nebraska/Wyoming border at the edge of the dog walking area. Anyone care to walk any further? (One woman not named Dorothy talking to her dog named Alex instead of Toto: I have a feeling we’re not in New Jersey anymore.)




Road sign between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming on I-80.



This always cracks me up when we drive by. We heard on the news a few weeks ago that this little town was recently sold. We only hope the new owner is not married or they will have to change the population to 2.










You’ve got to admit that this “town” doesn’t look like much. Good old Buford, Wyoming!

Thank you all so much for all the lovely comments over the past few days. I will get back into my routine of responding to comments and visiting your blogs by tomorrow!


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The “I” states are behind us now and so is a small bite out of the state of Nebraska. Good thing we are in for the night because it looks like some nasty weather about to hit us.

Not a totally pleasant drive today. The wind was really blowing all the way through Iowa and the part of Nebraska that we drove through. Nothing new about the wind and Nebraska. It’s always blowing. Funny thing about wind. You don’t notice it that much on the East Coast where there are plenty of trees to break it up. Here there is nothing so you feel the full force of it. And of course it’s always sideways!

New camera battery charging ... haven’t configured the new camera yet ... drinking a glass of wine while waiting for our pizza to be delivered.

Road tired and brain dead!

Next stop: the cabin!

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Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

Doesn’t it just figure? I went to take a photo of the sunrise in my side mirror this morning and my camera was saying “error.” Then it said “Card write protected” or something like that. So, the card was not working. Rick had taken it out last night to download the photo of the truck and something happened I guess. We tried everything and the card works in his camera, so it must be the electronics in mine. Bummer.

So here I sit in the parking lot Best Buy in Coral Ridge, Iowa (Iowa City) waiting with the dogs as Rick goes in to buy me a new camera! It’s too hot (88 degrees in full sun) to leave them in the car by themselves, so since he’s purchased the last two cameras for me I think I pretty much trust him to pick a new one out.

It’s my fault I’m pretty sure. Do you remember that photo of our little outdoor fire pit a few weeks back? Well ... I had forgotten that I took my camera down with me and left it hanging on the back of the chair all night. It also drizzled rain that same night. oops. Not very smart.

I’ve had it in my mind that I was close to needing (or is that wanting) a new camera soon but I did not plan this!

There is a big fire burning near here as well and it smells awful. I think it might be a tire fire since the smoke is really black.

Oh well. What’s a road trip without some drama?


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“Indiana wants me ... Lord, I can’t go back there…”
Remember those lyrics?
I have nothing against coming back to Indiana. In fact, it’s quite a nice state to drive through. Pennsylvania is a bear. It’s big. It’s usually packed full of trucks and lots of hills to go up and back down again.




oops!

Given that it’s Memorial Day Weekend, the traffic was pretty light once we got past the Pocono Mountains.

Sam threw up about 15 minutes in to the trip. Of course. He always gets car sick the first day out. Thank goodness I did not feed either of the cats this morning. I have learned the hard way even though it sounds cruel not to feed them.

We put three states behind us today in 11 hours of driving and 600+ miles: New Jersey (naturally it didn’t take too long), Pennsylvania (about 6 hours) and Ohio. We are about 60-some miles in to Indiana and tomorrow will tackle the Chicago area early on a Sunday morning, so that should be a piece of cake. Then it’s on to Iowa which is not much fun either since it’s very hilly, and finally the huge state of Nebraska. We’ll get 1/2 way through that state in to Grand Island tomorrow night. Once all the “I” state get past us we start to feel like we are truly in the West.

Pizza delivered in our room tonight which was absolutely delicious! The cats are adjusting better on the first night in a motel room than they usually do and the dogs have been fed, pottied and pottied again. Everyone is settled down now. One more out for the dogs and we can all lay our heads down and (hopefully) get a good night’s sleep.
So, as to the photo above: can you figure out just what is going on here? We did survive this scenario ...

For those of you who might be new to the blog, I am going to fill you in a little on our cabin in Colorado since for the next two weeks+ I’ll be blogging from there. For everyone else who already is familiar with the cabin, well, ho-hum for you! But why not read on anyway and you might learn something you didn’t know about it, okay?

We first bought the land in 1988 right before we moved to Holland. Seventy acres (or thereabout) of high sage covered prairie, deep gullies with mixed forests of aspen and pine, a beaver pond (which then had a beaver), a little creek that runs in the spring with snow runoff, and an absolutely perfect meadow for a cabin.

Rick standing by one of our property markers high above the cabin. The trees you see in front of him are on our land.

We didn’t get to enjoy it much before we moved, but while living in Europe for five years we always made a point when we were back on home leave to at least picnic on the property.

After our return in the summer of 1993 at first we camped on our land (tent style). A few years later we camped in the RV. We visited at all times of the year to take note of where the snow lay deepest and what parts were accessible in the winter and which were not so we were sure we were putting the cabin in the right spot. Sometimes in the winter we could make it in and sometimes the roads were drifted over and impassable.

We finally built the cabin in 2000. Rick kept a journal of it’s “birth” and if you’re interested you can read about it here. We had originally thought we would harvest the wood from our own lodgepole pines on the land and build it log by log ourselves, but thank goodness we came to our senses and tossed that romantic notion out.

After the cabin was built we spent every available weekend there. It was a two hour drive from our house in Ft. Collins. We also spent a full week in spring and one week again in the fall. Our spring week was always when my mom was visiting. She loved the cabin so! Here we are in 2004 with Sailor and puppy Hailey. (I personally love this pic!)

Our land lies just shy of the border between northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. The closest city (town) is Laramie. From Laramie it’s about a 45 minute drive on dirt roads which are sometimes not in the best of shape, depending upon when they were last graded. There is a cattle guard at the border and from that point on the roads are not plowed by the state of Colorado. Beyond here there be dragons. Travel at your own risk!

We are off the grid, providing our own services. The cabin is mainly powered by batteries that store energy from our solar panels on the roof. We have a propane tank for the furnace and propane fridge and stove. We also have a big wind turbine that has been left dismantled in our absence but when it’s in operation we get most of our electricity from the wind.

The wind blows here. A lot. When it snows the roads drift over. Even when it’s not snowing you can encounter white-out conditions due to the dry top layer of snow being whipped by the wind. We’ve been in one of these and trust me, it was not fun.

The year that stands out in my memory was when we had our neighbor down the road (about two miles) plow a path in the road to our cabin. One morning he called us and asked us how the weather was at our place. Our cabin is so sheltered by trees that we had no idea a white-out was happening. He was coming to get us. We packed up quickly and thought to meet him outside our driveway. The snow was about three feet deep. When we started out we could not tell where it had been plowed at all. We also got stuck up to our bumper. We were sitting ducks until our savior, Larry, could be seen in his big John Deere with the huge snowblower attachment blowing snow like crazy. He blew us a path to follow him out on while behind us the snow filled in almost immediately like some hungry monster gobbling up the space. It took forever to make that trip and it was terrifying to see the sheer brutality of winter up there.

Several people now live up here year round and it causes some problems. One person likes to plow his way out, thereby causing the roads to drift over worse than they would have if left alone because he doesn’t plow them correctly. The secret is to go over the snow instead of through it so most people have an all terrain vehicle with tracks and park their cars over the border at a friend’s house.

What people don’t realize is that this land is untamable. Wild. It’s always been that way. It lets you know, albeit subtly, that it is in charge; not you. You need to live with the land up here and not against it’s natural flow.

Some people are trying to tame it and make it more like a subdivision in town. We’re hoping the land takes charge and it never happens.

There’s a very good book that’s been written about the land surrounding our cabin. It’s called “The Meadow” and is written by a man whose family homesteaded here. It was a rough life and a good read. It’s still available at Amazon.

One of the old homesteads along the road (but not the one featured in the book!).

There is just something about the whole area that gets in your blood. I can’t explain it. It’s just there.

On and off we’ve toyed with the idea of selling it since we are so far away and unable to get there more than once a year, but we just can’t quite bring ourselves to do it. It is still Rick’s dream to live there for one entire year, winter and all, and I have agreed to see how it goes. Until then I can’t see us giving up our 70 acres of paradise.