Where Oh Where Have We Been?

The short answer is back home but we will tell a longer answer.

We headed due west after leaving Kansas City, overnighting in Burlington, CO.  There we had our ears glued to the weather radio as a severe thunderstorm with golf ball size hail was just north of us.  When they predicted a possible tornado, we “bugged out” and drove to the local hospital where they told us they had not yet begun “moving patients downstairs for shelter”.  This did raise our hackles but all was well and the storm skirted us.

We then went into Denver where we stayed at one of their wonderful state parks.  We enjoyed visiting with Anna Lee’s cousins JoAnn, for dinner at Maggiano’s Italian restaurant.

We breakfasted with more cousins Neil and Carol.  We took a lovely drive up the foothills with JoAnn.  While having lunch at Da Kind, a man pointed out a nail wedged into a tire of our tow car.  Simple repair at Costco.

Between Burlington and Denver was a bit of a climb to which the RV objected by overheating. What was not so simple was the need to have the radiator, etc. fixed at the local Cummins shop.  No problem you think but removing a radiator from our RV is a 10 hour job plus another 10 hours to put it back in.  (Do you remember Cummins from Dayton?)  Well this led to our decision to fly home (we love Southwest) for a week of bridge (Jerry), mahj (Anna Lee), and cards (both of us) with our group of home friends. What was amazing was the amount of junk mail that arrived over the three months we were gone.  It was four foot high stacks that we had to go through to get a pile of about two inches of relevant material that we had to deal with.  Small wonder that the post office is making all its money on junk mail.  It must be very frustrating to our neighbors who take such good care of our house for us.

We have returned to Denver (again, yeh Southwest) and after a really good dinner at Yak and Yeti with Neil and Carol got ready to return to the road.   In the picture below, anyone want to guess who are the biological relatives?

Anna Lee’s comment on her hometown:  Denver is huge and the traffic awful.  I would be lost almost anywhere but my neighborhood where I lived while in junior high and high school.  That has not changed, the duplex where I lived is still there, Hill Jr. High is still there and East High stands beautiful, still educating thousands of students.   But it is true, you can’t go home again, at least after over fifty years.

At the airport on our way back to the RV, we were delightfully surprised to see a Book Club (and more)
friend.  Pat caught Anna Lee up on some of what she has missed over the last three months.