After a long day of driving we pulled into North Platte to find somewhere to stay and something to eat. Ended up at a great little motel where we cleaned up, and then popped down the road to a Taco John’s for a quesadilla. The past few days we’ve not been cooking much, we’ve been eating breakfast in camp then snacking during the day, and eating out in the evenings. It’s not easy to find decent, healthy food on the road out here, so we’re going to do a shop tomorrow and start cooking again.
Thursday was another long day on the road – closing off our Nebraska experience and heading into Colorado. I was expecting to be driving through the same kind of open grassland landscapes that we saw when going east through South Dakota, the state just north of here, but the cornfields and agriculture in Nebraska extend a lot further west.
The skies were awesome. Driving into Colorado we saw a huge thunderstorm ahead – from about 20 miles away, the beast covered over a quarter of the horizon. The clouds were changing every minute as the storm developed. It looked pretty menacing. Not sure if we were heading into the belly of a full-on mid-west summer tornado, we flipped the radio on to get a weather update. Sure enough, the music was interrupted regularly by storm warning broadcasts. The storm was due to pass south of us by a few miles, with winds of up to 65 mph forecast, and golf ball sized hailstones being reported.
We cut through the trailing corner of the storm, and got our fair share of wind and rain before we popped out the other side for the final run into Denver. Driving straight through the city, we headed up into the Golden Gate Canyon State Park to look for a campsite. The site in the State Park was fully booked, but the ranger directed us down the road a short way to a National Forest site which still had a few places free. I’m sensing the outdoorsy and adventure vibe here – much like Montana and Wyoming – lots of cars and pickups with high-end mountain bikes on the back. Not so many kayaks or boats though. I think it’s going to be a bit harder to find free camp sites, so we may have to plan a bit more and book ahead.
Friday was a nice leisurely day, hanging around camp, tidying up the van, and making an excursion to a local library just down the road for Rose to do some stuff online. It feels a little strange to be right in the middle of beautiful mountain country and not walking, biking or getting out at all but it’s just nice to be stopped still for a while, recovering from a few long days of driving.
Road and Ocean 