The Great 2013 Vacation: The Mad Dash Home!

Now that I'm nearly finished with my report of our vacation--which has taken me a lot longer than I originally expected because of my decision to include "impressions" of the Church history sites and because of the trials I described in my last post--I think it would be easier to lump the two days of our return trip home into one post since it was mostly a mad dash to get back.

After breaking camp, we drove a few miles into the city of Topeka, Kansas to the final (planned) Steak 'n Shake on our trip.  As I mentioned in a previous post, as I perused the menu items on the company's web site, I learned they serve breakfast as well as lunch and dinner.  I figured if they served it, we might as well give it a try.  I am happy to report that breakfast was very good and the service was much better.  I don't recall what everyone else had, but I had a Portobello n Sausage skillet--yum.  Overall, I have to say it was a pretty impressive tryout.  I'm still not sure if or when we will be getting one near us or if one is being built in a neighboring town (the lack of news has been frustrating), but if the eventual franchise is as good as what we had on the road, it should do well.  After a quick trip to a near-by Wal-Mart for a new bag of ice and drinks (I had a funny encounter with the checker; I happened to mention we were on vacation, but before I could say we were on our way home he said, "On vacation; in Kansas?  What's there to see in Kansas?"), we were soon merged onto the I-70 and on our way to Grand Junction, Colorado.

About an hour into our trip, we began to see signs for the Oz Museum.  The theme for Girl's Camp was "There's No Place Like Our Heavenly Home" and many Oz inspired ideas were planned for the camp.  The closer we came to the exit, the more it became apparent to me that Jennifer would like to go just to see what it was all about.  The signs gave the impression that the museum was near the exit (or, I suppose I assumed such).  As I got off at the exit, I started looking around for any signs of buildings.  There was another sign pointing us toward Wamego, Kansas and another advertisement for the museum.  I turned in the appropriate direction and soon found that Wamego was roughly 10 miles north of I-70.  I admit to feeling a bit miffed by this deception, but I had committed us to going, so a sucked it up and kept driving.  We didn't have time to go into the museum once we arrived, but Jennifer had us take a picture of her in front of the place and Ben shot a video of her so she could make a message to "her girls" to let them know she was thinking about them in the middle of Kansas.  While I was taking Jennifer's picture, Ben and Isaac began laughing.  When we asked why, they pointed to the building next door to the museum; an establishment named "Toto's Tacoz" (a bit of a groaner).  I guess if someone wanted to claim they'd eaten at an Oz themed establishment, this would be the place to go.  It was a bit over the top I far as I was concerned, but I guess they figured "why not?"  Not wanting to loose any more time, I shooed everyone back into the car and we continued on our way.

 

"Toto, let's give tacos to the Munchkins!"

 

Our only major glitch with the Optima came after we stopped in Colby, Kansas for gas: the air conditioner went on the fritz.  This may not have been such a bad thing except for the fact that about 30 minutes after leaving Wamego the outside temperature climbed to about 105°.  For nearly 2 weeks, we had experienced nice, moderate temperatures for June (which made the humid East coast tolerable for us arid West coasters), but now we had run into the middle of a heat wave.  The air conditioner had attempted to fizzle out during the beginning of our trip, but I'd played with the controls and it roared back to life.  This time, however, no amount of coaxing worked.  Even at full blast, the amount of cold air exiting the vents was minimal.  Disgusted, I turned the unit off and we employed the 2/75 method--2 windows rolled down at 75 miles an hour.  It wasn't the most pleasant way to travel, but we really had no time to stop, call Avis, and search for a mechanic.  I did pull off at an exit once not long before we entered Colorado to see if I could figure out what was wrong, but I'm all thumbs when it comes to cars.  I popped the hood and attempted to look around for some obvious answer to our troubles, but all my search turned up was a reminder of how inept I am at mechanics.  We continued in this manner all the way to the Denver Temple (when the boys woke up, they felt the need to say, "We're not in Kansas anymore!" even though we hadn't been for a couple of hours).  We reached the next stop on our temple scavenger hunt and we're able to walk the grounds and see the temple close up (the last time we had stopped at the Denver Temple, the front gate was closed as we were relegated to taking pictures from the street).

 

Mission accomplished (pictures taken, temple grounds walked, legs stretched, and spirits recharged), we prepared for the next obstacle on our journey home: the climb into the Rocky Mountains and the decent to Grand Junction.  When we returned to the car, I decided to give the air conditioner a try--crazy thing roared back to life as though nothing had happened.  My worry about this next leg of our trip was the potential of Ben getting altitude sickness.  Several years before, we had driven this same stretch of I-70 on the way home and Ben had become sick at around the 9,000 foot mark; he didn't feel better until we were a good ways down the West side of the mountains.  Considering the trip goes from the Mile High City (at 5,280 feet) to 11,158 (the West-bound entrance of the Eisenhower Tunnel), in roughly 2 hours (give or take), I understood why this could be a problem again.  I told everyone to let me know if they started feeling sick at any time during our ascent (the last thing we needed was someone barfing in the car).  Maybe stopping in Idaho Springs for Carl's Jr. helped (perhaps food in the stomach made the remainder of the ascent easier to handle, or maybe I haven't a clue--more likely), but we had no problems this time.  The two things that did happen was a deer jumped onto the road from the median and got clipped by an SUV about 30 feet in front of us and the tire pressure light came on (I think I got off the freeway at an exit to take a look and ended up traveling 2 or 3 additional miles through swanky condominium complexes that offered no place to pull over until I drove into a parking lot in desperation with the hope that the owner of the lot didn't show up while I was visually checking my tires to find the flat the idiot light was claiming and finding nothing--grrr).  Ben and Isaac were amazed to find snow still on the ground as we approached the tunnel.  I find the Eisenhower Tunnel a fascinating ride; but, I've always had a soft spot for tunnels.  I should have asked Ben to video our approach and travel through, but I didn't (bummer).  There are several more tunnels to travel through on the way down the mountainside.  Finally, at some time around 11 o'clock that night, we pulled into the Grand Junction KOA, put up our tent, inflated our air mattresses for the final time and fell asleep.

For me, segments of the next day were pretty much a blur.  I was struck by the sharp contrast in scenery as we left Grand Junction and headed toward Utah.  After passing through the green mountains, we found ourselves in a desert.  During our previous trip through this area, much of it was in the dark.  I appreciated being able to see the beautiful mesas and plateaus of the desert.  Once we connected with the I-15 and traveled the appropriate distance, we stopped in St. George to make a side trip to the temple there--it wasn't on our scavenger list since we've visited the temple multiple times over the years, but we like it and wanted to stretch our legs so it didn't take much convincing to make the temple a rest stop.  After that, I think I clicked into autopilot of sorts as we marked time by calling out each remaining state we passed through: Arizona, Nevada, California.

 

 

St. George Temple--a nice close to our scavenger hunt.

Arizona! (Nice bug guts on the windshield, eh?)

Nevada!  Gettin' closer!

California!  Home stretch!

 

We would have arrived home sooner, but by the time we reached Barstow we were all hungry and wanted In-n-Out hamburgers for dinner.  We'd had some good food along the way, but the taste of good double-doubles made us realize we had returned to familiar territory.  Finally, at around 7:30 or 8 o'clock that evening, we gratefully pulled into the driveway of our home and found it still standing--the cats hadn't knocked it to the ground in our absence.  Funny thing (at least, to us), we had seen a huge, orange tabby cat when we pulled into the Albuquerque KOA 2 weeks previous.  The cat looked very much like our cat, Jonesy, so Ben and Isaac started making jokes about coming home and finding Jonesy as fat as the cat we had seen that night.  The occasional cry of "Fat Jonesy!" would be made as we traveled which would crack us all up.  As we walked into the house (chronicled on video by Ben), I picked up Jonesy and found he had put on some weight during our 2 week absence.  I pointed this out to everyone, and the cry of "Fat Jonesy!" rang through the house.  The end of successful family vacation; punctuated by laughter from all of us.  :)