Day 3: Manitou Springs, CO to Durango, CO

Manitou Springs is like Gatlinburg. Instead of the Smokeys, you're in the front range of the Rockies. Instead of fudge and religious t-shirts, you have tattoos and weed t-shirts. The big attraction is the Pikes Peak Cog Railroad, which takes you all the way up the mountain in about 90 minutes, then allows you about 10 seconds to eat, use the bathroom, take photos and update your Facebook status. As my uncle predicted in line, we were seated next to the three most misbehaved kids on the train. They formed a fugue with the conductor which went something like:

"The Cog Railroad was invented by..."

"I'M BORED!"

"Pike's Peak is home to marmots, big horn sheep...'

'I WANT TO SEE A TARANTULA!"

"Katharine Lee Bates was inspired to write 'America The Beautiful' after riding up Pikes Peak..."

"I SMELL FRENCH FRIES!"

The rest of the day was an epic road trip in itself. First, we went up to the Cripple Creek area to visit an old friend: Phantom Canyon Rd. This is the kind of road you can only find in Colorado. It twists and turns for about 25 miles down to Canon City--the armpit of the state. The speed limit is seldom above 20 mph and road signs along the way include "NARROW BRIDGE"  "PRIVATE PROPERTY" and my favorite, "FREE RANGE."  You go through two tunnels and by the time you hit the end of Phantom Canyon,  your butt is numb, but a little disappointed to be on pavement again. 

Whether it was a GPS hiccup or post-Phantom delirium, we drove a circuitous route to Pueblo before heading over to the Great Sand Dunes. We were only in Pueblo a few minutes, but the most exciting part of that journey was avoiding a U-Haul that had swerved into my lane. If Canon City is Colorado's armpit, maybe Pueblo is the appendix.

The Great Sand Dunes may supplant White Sands, New Mexico as my favorite place in the U.S. The dunes are formed by wind that carries sand from one set of mountains, but can't get it over the second set. Or something like that. The dunes look like they have no business being there and they are awesome. The beauty and the stillness made me feel giddy--the same feeling I had the last time I saw White Sands when I was five. 

I took as many photos as I could and a stranger kindly took a group photo of all of us. The stranger was from Cincinnati and didn't bat an eye when we did our O-H-I-O pose. He also didn't shut up. He was pontificating about Vietnam and other topics when we nodded and shuffled away from him.  Kind of hard to make a graceful exit when you're in the middle of nowhere.

The Adventure Van then took us from nowhere to nightmare along a stretch of Highway 160, now forever dubbed "White Knuckle 160." I've been in some nastiness. I live in Atlanta. But this was a different level. This was Nature. We were later than planned, so it was getting dark. OK. The road was twisty up into Wolf Pass. OK. Deer. OK. More deer. Uh, OK. More deer. DID THEY JUST MOVE TOWARD US?! (Brake. Swerve. GLOWING YELLOW EYES.) Rain. Dammit. Lightning. #$%^ my life. There were so many road hazards at once, it was like we were on a test track for Toyota. I gripped the passenger door as my uncle piloted The Adventure Van through the chaos. I sang along to Tom Petty, James Taylor and other mellow rockers on Sirius XM. I focused on the GPS. The reassuring "Mandy" was nowhere to be heard. The miles went down achingly slow. And then, we came across the gaudiest road warning I've ever seen. Six flashing yellow arrows pointing left with dots of red and God knows what else. It was like a casino sign on Fremont Street. All it needed was a neon Grim Reaper waving a scythe. 

We finally made it to Durango, where we passed a sign for a hotel that advertised "Hot Tub and 420 friendly." Our rooms at the Travel Lodge were not that special. The pillows felt like paper and the bathroom, with its shower chair,  looked like an ad from AARP Magazine.

Three stars.

Five stars for being alive.

 

  

 

    

Day 2: Topeka, KS to Manitou Springs, CO

Kansas is a land of sighs and yawns when you’re driving through it.  As the fields roll by, the yawns get longer and the sighs get heavier as you wonder whether you’ll ever escape this purgatory of landscapes.  Kansas is actually kinda pretty, or as my uncle put it, “Not as ugly as I thought it would be.” The problem is, Kansas changes very little as you head west. The scenery feels like it’s on one of those screens used in old cowboy movies to simulate motion. You swear you see the same field/horse/fence combo over and over. By the time we got to the windmills,  we were so desperate for something new, our excitement was like seeing  the New York skyline for the first time.  Or a unicorn.

But even windmills got old after a couple of minutes. Highway hypnosis set in. The Adventure Van seemed more like a surfboard gently bobbing on an ocean of grass. Speaking of grass, Diane’s daughter called her asking if she was going to “smoke dope” in Colorado. At one point Diane corrected her daughter, saying the “dope” was not “free” but merely “legal.”

Sigh. Free weed. There’s a thought exercise.

Conversations kept  us from complete boredom/madness and I learned something new: my mom was married on a national day of mourning for Bobby Kennedy.

Sigh. National day of mourning. There’s an omen .

A couple of glitches in the visual Matrix gave two odd billboards advertising the “world’s largest Czech egg” and “the 2^nd friendliest yarn store in the universe.”

So many questions, so little cell service to seek answers.

We pulled into a Dairy Queen where things when from odd to sinister. Just like a cowboy movie, we open the door and suddenly the locals stopped what they were doing to check out the strangers. Women in Mennonite? Clothes were running the counter and lounging around. The lead cashier smiled through tight thin lips and stared at me with cold unblinking eyes. The lead cook had holsters containing what looked like a Taser and a Bible. Off in the corner, an old rancher with a broken arm appeared to be running a meeting that we might have interrupted. We ate in unease and saddled up The Adventure Van, finally making it to Colorado.

Sigh of relief. Colorado. Hey, it looks like Kansas.

We pulled into Manitou Springs, where a hotel snafu forced my uncle and I to stay at a different hotel than mom and Diane. They stayed at the Magnuson Hotel. Uncle and I stayed at the Silver Saddle.

Diane said the room was nice enough but “smelled like natural gas.”

Three stars.

The Silver Saddle surprised us by be extra clean and having an extra bedroom.

Uncle: “The owner was nice.”

Four stars.   

Day 1: Columbus, OH to Topeka, KS

No one should wake up at 3:30 a.m. My subconscious was improperly ejected from the dream world and nothing made sense. My mom, uncle and I boarded The Adventure Van around 5:00 a.m. en route to pick up Diane in Grove City. After Diane got on board, my uncle asked that we all say a silent prayer for a safe journey. Less than 5 minutes later, we nearly drove into a ditch.

I drifted in and out of sleep for the next few hours, picking up snippets of conversation like:
"The View has gone down the tubes."
"Johnny Bench has lost some weight."
"I once tried to steal a fire truck naked and sit on it like a hood ornament."

The Adventure Van's GPS is named "Mandy" (though "Mary Margaret" is also being thrown around) and she has a voice that is at once cheerful, reassuring and sexy. I want "Mandy" to read me books, sing me to sleep and deliver bad news knowing that it's somehow all going to be OK. "Mandy" brightly purred her instructions to I-70 where we followed for 730 miles.

Ohio is the only state I know that has a sign thanking you for visiting before crossing into another state. Indiana welcomes you by boasting it's the "Crossroads of America." Not bad, but I prefer Ohio's slightly arrogant "The Heart Of It All." Illinois should change its lame "Land of Lincoln" to "We still have Stuckey's and Godfather's Pizza!"

After making our way through Indianapolis, we stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, where a member of our crew made the stunning announcement: "I can't poop to religious music." You see, this particular Cracker Barrel plays inspirational hits from the likes of Ricky Skaggs and Ernest Tubb and blares them in the bathrooms. Sure enough, when I went in, I was treated to a 120db version of "I'll Fly Away."

Casey, Illinois must be run by a maniac. We came to see the World's Largest Windchime and stayed for the World's Largest Golf Tee and the beginnings of the World's Largest Rocking Chair. And it's all free. You can walk right up to the chimes and ring them--and they sound like they should announce the death of a king. I have so many questions about this town, but I don't want to know the answers.

My uncle is a master planner. He has every detail of our journey mapped out and organized. Since we were making such good time, we decided to make an unscheduled stop at the St. Louis Arch. Technically, it's the Jefferson Westward Expansion Hidey-Ho Something Or Other Arch, but c'mon.
It was much too crowded and our timed tickets would have delayed us by three or four hours, so I just stood under the arch and took the obligatory photo that everyone does, including the National Park Service.

The trek to Kansas City was fairly uneventful though I was sad to see there is a strip mall named after Mark Twain. He probably would have loved it. Kansas City was way prettier than I imagined, while Topeka felt like nothing more than a few restaurants and an auto parts store. We had a surprisingly good dinner at a place called The Blind Tiger. Craft beer and barbecue. Done.

Our first day of the Great American Road Trip concluded at a Baymont Inn & Suites. We're staying in a staggering number of hotels, so I'll try add a review from my uncle for each one.

"Good room, but the person working the front desk was an evil queen."

3 stars (out of 5).