Yes, It's True, We are in VAIL, COLORADO

Good morning from the beautiful Vail Colorado. Yes, they let us stay here, can you believe it?! Two old, out of shape, tired people like us and they actually let us get a room here. We even went to a great Italian restaurant last night and had a very nice meal. Of course, we ate at about 4:00 because we had not had lunch yet and were very hungry. Being that early, we were the only ones in the place, but they served us and were very nice anyway!

After leaving Wichita yesterday, we drove to Dodge City Kansas hoping to see some historical places and things. We of course looked for Matt and Miss Kitty but they were nowhere to be found. As a matter of fact, nothing was to be found, nothing historical anyway. We located a place to eat lunch called Montana Mike's which was just across the parking lot from a big sign that said "Boot Hill". I figured we were close to the history we were looking for. Wrong! After having a great lunch, we went across to the building near the Boot Hill sign and discovered only a big tourist trap kind of place. You pay an entrance fee, go into a room to see a video, then exit the back of the room to the "western street" (which we could see from the parking lot). It looked like a bunch of very small Hollywood set buildings lined up with old paint. Behind the buildings was supposed to be a "part of Boot Hill" in the corner at the top of the hill. I asked the girl at the counter in the gift shop if the grave markers were there to see and she said the original ones were gone and "we have put replicas there"........pass! We bought a t-shirt that said "Get out of Dodge" and then did just that!

Driving through western Kansas is a beefy experience to say the least! We saw one feed lot after another with the small rolling hills just covered with pens and thousands and thousands of head of cattle. More cattle than we have ever seen before! When we arrived in Garden City Kansas (which by the way has absolutely nothing to do with anything resembling a garden or anything green!) to spend the night, the lady at the hotel desk told us there are 2.1 million head of cattle in the surrounding area! I think we saw at least half of them ourselves!

We left Garden City Kansas and headed for Denver. Along the way we talked about whether or not to go back to Yellowstone as we had originally planned to do, or just head home. We decided our being homesick was growing each day so we would not return to Yellowstone this time and instead we would head home. We miss the smell of concrete in our City!

So Wayne found a different route to take which brought us here to Vail Colorado and we are very happy we took this way. The Rocky Mountains are absolutely breathtaking. We drove through Denver without stopping and was thrilled to see the beautiful mountains after so long in Western Kansas and the flat hot dry territory we had been through.

We arrived in Vail and immediately I felt the higher elevation. Just two or three steps and I am out of breath! Depending on where you are in the valley or on the slopes, you are from 8000 to 11,000 feet up. It is beautiful and I took many many pictures of course. I will put the pictures up here tomorrow since we are in a bit of a hurry to get started this morning. We just heard there was 1-3 inches of snow expected in Salt Lake City today and that is our next stop so we aren't happy about that!

We are definitely getting excited to be back home. We are getting a bit tired. We have seen 18 states, traveled over 7000 miles by the time we arrive back in San Francisco, and have had an absolutely magical and wonderful time on this road trip. But now it's time to decompress, and be back home in our little apartment in San Francisco and be ready for our next big adventure with Kevin Barbi and Mom the end of this month. We will be going to Nashville and Memphis to see Graceland. For any of you who know me well, you know how big a thrill this will be for me to see Elvis' home.

So, that's it for today as we are going to get packed up and get back on the road again and make our way back home.

By the way, our license plate game is now only missing THREE plates. We saw Delaware actually as we were in some small town in Western Kansas, I don't remember the name right now. So that only leaves Rhode Island and Connecticut and Hawaii. We have seen 47 different license plates on this trip! Fun, huh!

Love to all, time to pack up
Wayne and Colleen