Road Trip

With Very Excellent Husband Don off in Italy pursuing his 60th birthday cycling trip of a lifetime, I decided to go to Durango to see Excellent Son Sawyer. Road trip!

Now, I don’t like traveling.  I do enjoy being in other places – I just don’t like getting there.

I had a lot of things going for me. Durango is an awesome town. My animal/house sitters are great. VEH Don is eight time zones away having the time of his life.  The epic floods in Boulder County were receding.  Therefore, the thought of a mere six hours filled with gorgeous scenery to get to the southwest corner of Colorado shouldn’t have been such a struggle.  But I had a hard time making myself get in the car.

At the last minute, I made Keela, the dog who HATES riding in the car, come with me.  We would make perfect road trip partners.  She made the trip to Durango one previous time.  I THINK I said I would never do that again, but my memory sucks, so…On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again…

We stopped at LaMar’s Donuts on the way out, to get my favorite Cinnamon Twist donut.  The woman in front of me bought the last one.  We stopped at Starbucks to get a Trenta (big ass) iced tea for the road.  They were CLOSED because of the floods.

We regrouped, squared our shoulders, and headed out.  And almost immediately got stopped by a roadblock because of, yes, the floods.  I almost drove straight home.  But damn it, I’m not a wimp.  Nor is my dog.  So we turned around and headed back to go the long way.

Detouring took us past Home Depot, Keela’s favorite place in the world.  (She literally rolls over on her back when she sees an orange apron – treat please!)  At this point, Keela started to pant.  Tongue out, mouth open wide panting.  Home Depot is about 2.5 miles from our house.

At about mile 75, I started to worry.  How long can a dog pant? By this time she had also climbed from the back seat, her usual riding position, onto the console next to me in the front.  She is a not small dog.  It is a very small console.

The sky was beautifully upset the entire drive.  Nice to look at, but Keela was so freaked out she got startled by the windshield wipers and tried to climb into my lap.  (Safety first.  No photos of insane dog on my lap.)

Anyway, we finally made it.  One of the big things on this trip was to get Sawyer a new bike. We took Keela for a walk in a downtown neighborhood before we started shopping.

We were a couple of blocks away from the car when the heavens opened up …and drenching rain came pouring down.  Nothing like shopping in wet clothes.  But we persevered.

The trip home was like the trip out – panting dog, weird skies.  Hunting season had apparently started, so the drive was made much longer by slow trucks pulling trailers on roads so curvy it was hard to pass.

Being in Durango was a blast.  But next time, can I use the Transporter from Star Trek to get there?  Please?  Pretty please?

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