Day 3 - Mountains are cool...really cool! Kansas is not.

Good morning from Cortez, Colorado!! We didn't manage to blog Sunday night because there really wasn't anything to write about. Chris wrote a blog on his site (Theguion.wordpress.com) called "Kansas. Sucks." and that's pretty much a summation of Day 2. We spent that night at my friend Lisa's house in Denver, which was fun. We did make a video of ourselves on the drive through Kansas.

Now, this was before we got to the really...really...horrific, desolate flatland that is most of Kansas. It's cool for a little while, but then it turns brown (with a little bit of green here and there) and flat. You also drive in a straight line. I almost cried.

The top picture is all we saw for hours and hours. Notice the miles on the GPS until the next turn and what is around us....we celebrated when we saw the Colorado border!!

Today was the first day we deviated from the GPS. The Garmin, along with Vader (who has remained muted), wanted to take us South through Colorado Springs and not through the Rockies. That was deemed unacceptable and we headed West on I-70. As we climbed through the haze of the local forest fires, we found out that driving through the mountains isn't as remote as we had thought. We definitely stopped at a Starbucks and got coffee!!! 

Talking to Dad on speaker to tell him how cool it is that we are at Starbucks!

We continued on further into the mountains and higher in elevation. Stopping at a turn-off, half an hour was quickly whittled away by hiking and taking pictures. It was so unbelievable! We also took a Day 3 video as we were waiting for what seemed like forever to start down the mountain because of construction taking the road down to one lane.

 The rest of the drive was just as spectacular, with different lanscapes and winding roads keeping things interesting. If anyone remembers the most awesome Nintendo 64 game, Cruisin' USA, Chris definitely played one of the songs from that as we were driving through the mountains. It pretty much topped off what was already a fantastic drive! There was another scenic lookout point that we quickly lost another half an hour taking pictures. The drive through Kansas was (almost) worth it just to get to the Colorado drive yesterday. 

Today we head to Four Corners and then on to Phoenix for the night!