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Trip report, Colorado Wildfires
We flew out of Tulsa on our free
Southwest Airline miles.
For still unexplained reasons, Southwest lets Mrs. Bart fly for free.
She has attained "companion" status,
which is what every girl shouds have.
Southwest never explained why or how, we just accepted their generosity
which means their free miles go twice as far.
We landed after a really bumpy flight.
I assume it's the mountains we never quite fly into that cause this?
I get double-points when I use AVIS so we
did that.
Except they didn't have my f-ing car when we landed.
I have their fancy "Preferred" status
that's free - the only advantage is that
they're supposed to drive me directly to my car while the little people
have
to stand in that long-ass line at the AVIS counter.
First, Hummel ( he was from Eqypt) tried
to put me an a Ford F-150 pickup.
Mrs. Bart did NOT want to be thrown around in a clunky truck for a
week, so we waited.
One luxury I'm willing to pay for is
satellite radio.
Without it, all you get in Colorado is Pigboy's Nazi hate from the
local AM stations.
Hummel was so late finding us a vehicle,
hel threw the satellite radio in for free.
Of course, once we got on the road, the satellite radio offered us
different packages.
How does a company get as big as AVIS and still have their heads up their asses?
OK, so we drive the couple of hours to Fort Collins, where the wildfires were raging.
Why Fort Collins? Mrs. Bart had a nephew getting married.
The wedding wasn't till 7 PM and we had some time to kill so we went to Wyoming
which was only 30 miles away and we haven't been to Wyoming since we went to
Yellowstone twenty years ago, so we decided - what the hell.
In Wyoming, we saw tons of hueueueueuge windmills.
I didn't know Wyoming had such a large gay population.
For sure, you'd never see a windmill in 100% straight Oklahoma, that's for sure.
No Sirree, Bob, we like that dirty, polluting oil here in Oklahoma, no gay windmills for us!
They call this part of America "Big Sky Country" because the sky is bigger there.
Coming back, we saw some smoke from the wildfires so we went chasing them like we were Helen Hunt.
That didn't work - they had roadblocks everywhere.
Looking to the left, we saw a mountain that had been on fire.
BTW, a shot of Chinaco to those firefighters.
It was 105 in the shade, and that's before you get close to the fire.
Moving on, we had a wedding to prepare for.
It was an outside wedding. I'm sure when the bride decided on an outdoor wedding,
she had no idea the state of Colorado would break all heat records that Saturday.
The smoke caused so much trouble, it made the wedding pictures come out funny.
Eventually the wedding was over and we got a good night's sleep to prepare for the next day.
Just a couple of hours west of Fort Collins you run into Estes Park, Colorado.
We'd never been to Colorado in the height of the summer.
Too many cars, too many kids and there were lines for everything.
So, we drove into Rocky Mountain Park to get away from the people.
We took the old dirt road (Fall River Road?) to the top of the Rockies - the Continental Divide.
It was gorgeous, except for the millions of dead, brown trees from global warming.
Wait, does that look like smoke to you?
Turns out Estes Park had wildfires just like Fort Collins.
Colorado would lose over 500 homes in just this one week.
This dirt road was a trip!
Pretty soon, we were higher than the snow (cough!)
Eventually we headed back into Estes Park to get our hotel when we saw this.
Deer and sometimes giant elk pose for the tourists.
We were watching the deer at Estes Park Lake when we heard a commotion. (Rare Bartcop movie here)
The next day we had to drive at least six tough hours so we hauled ass.
Sidebar:
OK, so we fly free on Southwest Airlines, but one still has to be frugal.
We knew we had this wedding coming up AND we had a Bartcop family reunion scheduled
so I convinced my family to meet up in Colorado the day after the wedding - smart, eh?
So we met up with the never-seen-the-mountains-before family and drove south thru the Rocky Mountains.
It's some damn fine driving - the scenery is spectacular.
We drove thru the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, which is often the coldest non-Alaska spot in America.
That's my brother playing Don't Look Down with the 1,000-foot cliffs at the Black Canyon.
If you've never been to the BC of the G, it's Grand Canyon-ish - see the river that cut all this rock out?
At least that's what the liberal scientists say - I think God carved it personally with His Heavenly shovel.
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There were several fun tunnels to drive thru.
We were getting closer to Durango,
our next stop.
Do you know what's coming next?