Driving day 1.

Left friendly Fridley at 4am for the big trek to the southwest.

the first 6-7 hours was a normal road trip, Twin Cities to Des Moines then on to Omaha and Lincoln, NE. That’s where the fun really started.

Kansas and Colorado each brought their own little adventures. Somewhere in Kansas (it all looks the same), we started following a “wide load” vehicle hauling one of those big ole wind mill blades. Being we weren’t on anything that resembled an interstate, we ended up following this thing at a crawling speed (or so it seemed). Mrs. Mario finally caught a break and threw the Civic in turbo mode and left the tractor trailer in her dust.

The joy lasted all of five minutes when we caught up to another “wide load” vehicle, this time hauling something that resembled a grain silo – only a hell of a lot bigger. The driver wasn’t taking any chances and for the most part rode literally down the center of a 2-lane highway. Oncoming traffic rode off the shoulder to pass and the rest of us behind him could do nothing but smile through our gritted teeth.

Things got a little dicey when another “wide load” vehicle carrying an earth mover (kind of like what you find in the mining towns in northern Minnesota) was coming head on to the silo carrying truck – like two elephants trying to pass each other on a city sidewalk. Happy to report the little dance they did was a huge success.

Our map had us turning off onto another highway and I guess the big silo thing wanted to go where we were going because he turned onto the same highway. Thankfully they pulled off the side of the road and allowed all of us to pass.

We entered Colorado close to Cheyenne Wells for another bout of navigating 2 lane highways bisecting ghost towns where the speed limit would go from 65 down to 35 (guess they wanted to make sure the ghosts were safe). Big open spaces with long flat roads between most of our slow downs allowed us to open up the Honda Civic and see what that baby would do. For any of my law enforcement friends out there, I will not disclose what the speedometer read so as not to participate in any sort of admission statement which could potentially lead to several years of being incarcerated in a town jail in one of those those towns we blew through.

We hit Trinidad (in record time I might add), found a place to sit down and have dinner and a place to crash for the night.