I’m starting to lose track of what day and time zone it is. Mountain Standard Time. Do I pretend it’s Chicago time? We’ve had several days of all-day driving. It was 7.5 hours from Omaha to Denver. Drove through a thunderstorm to get to the Mile High City and our AirBnB house for the night. It’s in some non-descript suburb. According to the local weather report, heavy smoke from the western wildfires are rolling in tonight, causing smog-like conditions and a resulting air-quality alert. I guess the particulate from wildfires is as worse as cigarette smoke for your lungs. I’m already breathing harder than normal due to the altitude change. Earlier this evening I logged into the National Weather Service website to see what the conditions will be for the Four Corners area. Earlier driving through Nebraska, temps hit 100 degrees, with low humidity. “This doesn’t feel that bad” my kids said. “Chicago feels worse”. That’s because we had 70% humidity there compared to 25% in the dry plattes (buttes?) of the Nebraska plains leading to Colorado.
Ahead of us tomorrow is another early morning start and another 7-8 hour drive in winding mountain roads, some of which have experienced flash flooding and mudslides. As if those weren’t enough, add air quality issues to our pandemic travel bingo card.
POINT OF NO RETURN
But we’re plowing ahead. The goal is to get to Morefield Campground inside Mesa Verde National Park where we’ll camp for two days. Our travel buddies booked an air-conditioned bus tour of the archaeological preserves in the park. All I heard was “air-conditioned”. From there we move on to Big Water, Utah and the nearby Lake Powell and kayaking. Later, we shift to Zion National Park and then the Grand Canyon and New Mexico.
But as of night two, I’m tired and going to go to bed early after I finish this blog post.