After many computer problems, I finally, have some pictures up of our trip to Las Vegas.

We left on Saturday afternoon, after Brandon got off from a full day of work. I had already packed the car, taken the Furries to the Veterinarian’s office to be kenneled and made reservations for our first 2 nights of travel. The first night was in Lincoln, NE, the second was to be in Grand Junction, CO. Both reservations were at Motel 6, as we thought that Gracie would be traveling with us. Look for a blog about motels and hotels along the way. Our first night was difficult finding a room in Lincoln, after we cancelled our booking at the M6 from the lobby. We found an available room at the Holiday Inn Express and turned in, resting up for the next day of travel.

The HIE had an incredible free breakfast, with the sweetest hostess. We enjoyed our meal, gassed up and hit the Interstate right at day break. We had a 10+ hour drive ahead of us, destination Grand Junction, CO. We had planned our trip to get to LV as quick as possible causing us to miss some road side sites. Next trip the plan will include, shorter days and more local stops, to learn and enjoy new things, rather than just what you can see from the freeway.

Southern Nebraska isn’t particularly pleasing to the eye, lots of fields, little towns and not much else along the very flat terrain. “Apothecaries” started showing up about an hour and a half from the Nebraska state line, many visible from the Interstate. I was very interested in stopping in to see how they compared with the shoppes in Washington. Denver was somewhat difficult to traverse even with GPS and not straying more than a mile off of the Interstate. Brandon and I were quite familiar with Denver, 20 years ago, like everything else, Denver has grown exponentially. Fast food for lunch was decided upon, we decided on Safeway Deli. According to my cell’s GPS there was a full service location just off of an exit that we thought would be easy from memory. It wasn’t. My GPS started to go wonky, sometime during this period. After almost an hour of driving around, getting farther away from the highway, one-way streets and heavy traffic, we diverted to a Burger King. This was our first trip into a city of any real size since the onset of mask mandates. Most people were wearing masks and they were required inside business’, more people seemed to be following the rules in Denver than in Iowa.

We managed to get back to the Interstate with some difficulty, we had switched to Brandon’s GPS, which was working better than mine, but still was giving occasional wrong turn info. We headed south west and over the Rockies. We stopped for photo ops in Vail, Breckinridge and some incredible views along the route. One of the computer problems that I have mentioned, apparently started here. None of the pictures that we took on our Sunday trek were on Brandon’s iphone when we got home. The road through the mountain was winding, well maintained , but still wet in places from recent snow melts. There was some remaining snow on the mountain tops, but not enough to ski or worry about driving through. However, the drivers through the entire range were completely psycho. I feel old pointing this out, but 90% of the traffic was driving way too fast for the terrain. We had been through this area before, but not together. We were both amazed at how many more houses and people that there were now as opposed to 20 some years ago. We, of course, expected growth, but not at all to this degree.

After a stop at an Apothecary in the quaint little town of Parachute, CO, we made it into Grand Junction. We had cancelled our reservation at M6, so we would have to go property to property, to find a room, or go web surfing. Brandon stopped at the first motel we saw right off of the freeway, it was a Super 8. 8’s always have good rates, but the property’s are a crap shoot when it comes to comfort and quality. This one was excellent on all accounts.

After a good nights sleep, we headed out just after day break. There were some statues listed on the Roadside America website, we had time, so we headed to one art work that was closest to us. Imagine our delight to find that the entire downtown district was full of statuary! We parked nearest to the corner of the metal buffalo (the statue that we had been directed to) and walked only 1 block in all four directions and were treated to all of the pieces included in the slideshow below. There were many more, but we had a few more sites to see in the area, before returning to the road to Nevada.

Our Monday had just barely started. We were in for another long driving portion of our journey, but we had decided to travel about 12 miles to Palisades, CO for pics of a few more roadside art works.