Once we got on the road the trip was much like Thursday's, only this time in daylight — a long road bisecting pretty much nothing. Utah has some amazing scenery — Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks are outstanding — but the stretch we were on, which was to take us into Colorado, wasn't too scenic... until we saw the rock formations rearing up from the desert.
I used my head and asked Alica to shoot a video of one stretch we went through:
After a quick stop for petrol (another $75) and some tat (a Utah t-shirt, fridge magnet and sticker) we continued on our way. We passed a sign for Thursday's original destination, Richfield. It was another 111 miles, so there was no way we could have made it that night. She'd already told me that Friday's destination was two hours past Denver, so you can probably imagine my reaction when I saw a sign with the words DENVER 592 on it. But, on we went, stopping to let the dogs out on a small part of Utah that is now forever Cadbury .
Once again, Mo moved out of shot.
Alicia shot this video soon after we crossed the border into Colorado. The scenery in Western Colorado is much the same Utah, and we were once again pretty much constantly heading uphill. But the views changed once the road started following the Colorado River. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of it as I suck. I did manage to whack the RV's right mirror on a sign as we crawled through roadworks, sending it (the mirror) slamming into the passenger window. Fortunately it didn't smash but I did panic a bit. Alicia swears there's video of this event but I don't believe her.
After another stop for petrol and another $84 spent (continually going uphill doesn't do much for fuel economy) we continued on, our minds full of happy thoughts.
Unfortunately, our — or especially my — views on Colorado rapidly changed once we hit the roadworks and the Rocky Mountains. There's nothing like urging an RV to get over 40mph as it crawls up a 6,000-foot mountain with its hazard lights on while being overtaken by cars, trucks, 18-wheelers and other RVs.
It wasn't just the going up that was an issue. Going down the other side of the mountains frankly (and I realise I'm leaving myself open to some stick here) scared the shit out of me. I'm not used to driving down steep, windy roads in a vehicle that weighs a ton, needs about 150 feet to come to a stop and contains my family and a lot of our possessions, and as the damn thing keeps pulling to the right it made for an interesting venture. It does have a thingy where the gears will hold it back as you go downhill, but the idea of *not* having my foot on or over the brake pedal is one I couldn't deal with, so I used the brakes. Which made the gears shift down, which whacked the revs through the roof. I couldn't win.
But you don't just drive down one side. Oh no, that would be too easy. You drive down, say, one third of the side and then you're heading back up again, with your hazards going and the RV struggling to get over 35mph. And this went on FOR HOURS. Bloody *hours*. We crested Vail Summit, some 10,000 feet above sea level, and started down... then started going back up again.
And Colorado roads SUCK. Roadworks are everywhere right now, including two eight-mile stretches where the lanes are down to one each way. At one point we saw a sign saying DAMAGED ROAD AHEAD and about 19 seconds later we we were smashed by potholes and gouges in the road. If you can send someone out to put a sign up, why can't you send several someones out to fix the sodding road? The thing with driving an RV is that you have storage spaces and cupboards that are full of stuff, stuff that gets slammed around every time you hit a pothole.
With me getting more nervous and wound up, we finally spotted the lights of Denver in the distance, although by that point my opinion of Colorado was so low that they looked more like shards of glass in a squashed dog turd.
Once through Denver we took the 76 East towards Fort Morgan. The 76 is an astonishing road. It's as if someone said, "Make me the shittiest road you possibly can. If you think of a shitty road, this one has to be shittier than that. Imagine a road so bad it makes the Garden Grove Freeway feel like a supermodel's inner thigh, then make it even worse." And they did it, they actually did it. It's not a road; it's a series of concrete slabs laid down with what appear to be six-inch gaps between them, said gaps filled with concrete to a height three inches above that of the slabs. "Bumpy" does not describe it. I actually can't describe it, but I do know it was bloody awful and went on for probably 15 miles.
Rant over.
By this point it was pushing 11pm, I'd been driving for 12 hours, and we were both pretty frazzled. Finally we saw our destination, another Walmart, and crashed out for the night. We covered 652 miles. Added to the 438 we did on Thursday, we'd driven 1,008 miles of the 2,940 to Vermont. And we're still together!
Saturday morning we were I was up bright, early and bloody freezing at 6.30am. After struggling into my clothes (the RV does not have a lot of space, especially with four dogs all thinking they're about to go for a walk) I took the trash to the nearest bin and went into Walmart to pick up some Starbucks. Once Alicia was up we walked all four pups, which is always a fun event, got back in the RV and headed off at 8am. Our plan was to get out of Colorado, cross Nebraska, and reach an RV park in Iowa.
The drive through the rest of Colorado was a dream, mainly because the bloody mountains were behind us. Once you're over the Rockies the state is surprisingly flat, which suited me fine. We filled up the tank again ($76, if you're keeping record) and kept going, determined to reach Iowa as soon as possible, and not just because Nebraska is in the way.
Nebraska. What can I say about Nebraska? It had some pretty clouds. Apart from that it's flat. And monotonous. There's not even a "Welcome to Nebraska" sign, and I had Alicia bound to her seat to make sure she didn't miss it. It's just... there. Thanks to the flatness and the light traffic on the 76 we were able to bomb along at a steady 75mph for almost the entire way, making great time to get back on schedule. We did have to stop again to take the dogs out and get more petrol ($83), and I popped into the store to get some coffee and to check the souvenirs. No one was wearing a mask except me, but I managed to find a small Nebraska sticker among all the "Praise Jesus" fridge magnets. Needless to say, we were pretty glad to start seeing signs for Des Moines, Iowa, nice and close to our destination.
Alicia drove the RV for the first time. I won't go into details, but suffice to say that there's nothing like hearing your girlfriend say the words "Talk to me before I fall asleep" as she's piloting a small bungalow down the Interstate at 70mph. I yapped to her for a bit about what I want to do in Vermont, the telescope I want to buy, the distinct desire to get out of Nebraska before we discovered that Children of the Corn is actually a documentary, and some other stuff (I too was half-asleep) before I gently persuaded her to pull over so I could drive the rest of the way.
With about 130 miles to go we somehow missed the gigantic "Welcome to Iowa" sign over the 80 so Alicia snapped this pic to prove that we made it out of Nebraska without people discovering we're liberal atheists and sacrificing us to the Great Orange Turd:
To be honest, at this point I'm so knackered I can barely remember the last part of the trip. Iowa is pretty flat and also had some nice clouds. We reached the RV park easily enough and were overjoyed to discover that it has a dog park, so Erebus was able to burn off some energy by running around and randomly pouncing on Cadbury. There's also free wifi, which is how I'm finally able to update the blog. I thought it would be easy enough to use my phone as a mobile hotspot, but it turns out that my new $550 Chromebook can't be tethered. Awesome. So these posts might be a bit sporadic.
That's another 563 miles, driven in nine hours, putting us at a total of 1,571. We're basically halfway to Vermont and on schedule to get there Tuesday. Our target for tomorrow is to get across the rest of Iowa, all the way across Illinois and stay in another Walmart on the Illinois/Indiana border. Wish us luck.
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