Colorado

At some point in Kansas City, MO, we had the conversation about which would be the best route home to Los Angeles.  Our original plan was to go the "southern" route through a bit of Oklahoma, Texas, and then New Mexico and Arizona, but I think the heat we'd already been experiencing had us looking to Colorado and the mountains.  [I was also wondering which route would be more hybrid-friendly as my Honda Insight never had such an extreme workout.]  However it happened, we found ourselves continuing along Interstate 70 from Topeka on Wednesday morning, crossing Kansas and into Colorado.

This photo was taken about 50 miles into Colorado by our wonderful
chauffeur, Stefano.  [OK, we didn't really have a chauffeur named Stefano--
this was taken with my Canon set-up on the roof of the car and on auto-timer.]

For a good stretch of road between the Kansas-Colorado border and Denver, we were following (or being followed by) an ominous looking thunderstorm to our south.

One of our GPS apps, Waze, was suggesting a route that would have had us driving right into it, so we trusted Google Maps and still wound up in a heavy downpour.  Pav pulled off at the closest exit, and we waited out the rain in a convenience store parking lot before continuing on through Denver, the Mile High City, to Frisco, Colorado which is nearly two miles high!  By the time we reached Frisco, the temperature had dropped to a brisk 54 degrees.  [I must add here that Pav did an outstanding job of driving through the mountains--he doesn't know, it but I was quite nervous during this stretch of the drive. I watched him carefully maneuvering through the descents and climbs and made mental note so that I could do the same the next day.]  

We ate dinner at a good Mexican restaurant, checked in at our so-so hotel, and settled in for the night.  This might not have been our ideal stop, but it was a necessary one.

On Thursday morning, we awoke early and headed out to breakfast at a local eatery on Main Street in Frisco.  Main Street, like the rest of Frisco, is sparkling clean and looks like a movie set.  We then stopped at Whole Foods to pick up food for the day's drive, knowing that we had somewhere between 8 and 10 hours of road ahead of us.

Once again, we hopped on Interstate 70, prepared to get through Colorado and most of Utah...