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Day 1 - departure
Day 2 - Pike's Peak
Day 3 - Wyoming
Day 3 - Yellowstone 1
Day 4 - Yellowstone 2
Day 4 - Yellowstone 3
Day 5 - Grand Teton 1
Day 6 - Grand Teton 2
Day 7 - Flaming Gorge
Day 8 - Maroon Bells
Day 9 - La Manga Pass
Day 10 - driving home

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Edmond, Oklahoma - Kansas - Colorado Springs, Colorado

Getting the RV and hitting the road for a long, long trip

Friday June 22, 2001

After weeks of preparation and buying the grocery stores 'empty', finally this was the day of departure. The RV would be available at 2:00 PM, so Grandpa and Rob went to get it, making sure to be there in time, since we wanted to leave somewhere between 3 and 4. The RV was indeed available at arrival at American Dream Vacations near the airport in South Oklahoma City, but it took almost two hours to get through the paperwork and the walk-through. This last part is necessary to learn how to operate the vehicle and all the things that make it a home on wheels, like the water, electicity and sewer connections, the generator, the waterpump, the tables and the awning. It is also to check up on the state of the RV, so we would not be charged for existing damage.

Rob drove the RV home to Edmond, because he wanted to get used to the size of the 'big rig' before having to drive with 7 more vacationers in it. He never drove something this big, 28 foot long, so getting some experience with it was necessary. Grandpa drove back Rob's minivan. After arrival at home, a bunch of busy people started to load the RV like they were a hurd of ants. We got everything loaded pretty quickly. Not everything was in its final place, but that could be done on the road. We left the home just before 5 PM for the first stretch to Colorado Springs.

Luckily, the initial stretch, going North on I-35 through Oklahoma, went pretty smooth and we were gaining back some of our lost time. There were still a lot of the green fields left, so the state looked pretty nice and everybody was in a good mood. Rob started to get a good feel for the size of the RV pretty quickly, so that was good for his confidence in making this trip successful.

On the border of Oklahoma and Kansas we stopped to make a picture of Jerrett at the Kansas state sign, because it was the first time he was leaving the state of Oklahoma. We continued North through Wichita and around that time Grandpa took the wheel for his first stretch. He had driven big vehicles before, but we decided that he would start while it was still light, so he could get used to this one. At Salina, we turned West on I-70, right when it got dark. It was basically the only real change in direction during the whole trip of about 11 hours.

Before Colby, Kansas, around midnight, we changed drivers again, As we were getting closer to the Kansas/Colorado border, we were passing the timeline, separating the Central and the Mountain timezones. Although the zones generally follow the state lines, at this location in Kansas it is located one county from the border. Just before 1 AM we crossed the line, which made it just before Midnight in the new time zone and therefore it put us in the previous day again, even while it was just for a few minutes. A little later we entered Colorado.

At the town of Limon we left Interstate 70, which continues to Denver and beyond. We had to go through the city streets of Limon to reach Highway 24 to Colorado Springs. At first it seemed like the speed limit was going to be very low, so we got a bit worried about the travel time, but luckily it was just a construction zone and after a few miles we could get back at a decent speed. About halfway, we started to see some red lights in the sky ahead of us. These were actually lights on top of a mountain. We thought it could be Pike's Peak, but later we realized that these were just lights on towers on the first line of mountains, which is not as high as Pike's Peak.

Kansas is very flat and also the eastern half of Colorado, up to the Rocky Mountains is mostly pretty flat and empty. We couldn't see much of it anyway, because it was in the middle of the night. We would have to wait until the next day to see the majestical mountain ridge towering over the plains we were about to leave.

We had to go through the streets of Colorado Springs for a while to make it to I-25, which we had to follow for a few miles to get to the Golden Eagle Ranch RV Park campground, which was actually located in a small canyon like feature in the foothills of the Rockies. After arrival, we hooked up for the first time, got the beds layed out and tried to get some rest.