Thursday, June 15th: The Continental Divide

We hit the Rockies today!  And I tell you what, we were excited to see the end of Kansas and it's endless windmills.  The Midwest nearly did us in.  We replaced THREE tires today!  Not changed.  Replaced. I’m not even sure how that’s possible.

Since our plans were derailed completely, we’ve not made it to any of the planned overnight stops.  So we’ve just stopped along the way when we can find a parking lot that seems kindly to parking campers.  Last night we turned into a Sam’s Club and found a lovely dark corner in the parking lot.  It was around midnight so Tim and I let the kids sleep and popped out the camper beds, relocated items that had fallen, pulled out the sleeping bags.  Just as we started shuffling the kids into the beds, the entire parking lot suddenly lit up with half a dozen lights.  At first we thought we’d triggered some kind of alarm, but all stayed quiet.  We waited a bit but it seemed like it wasn’t about to go back off.  We noticed some overnight workers in another part of the lot and after some questions, we were told that the lights were off so they could fix a broken sprinkler system and they would now remain on for the rest of the night. Tim, who likes to tease me that my eyelids don’t work, would have sucked it up and stayed put.  But I could not imagine sleeping under the basking glow of the floodlights all night.  And so, much to everyone’s disappointment, we packed it back up and pulled out.  We crept around checking various parking lots but the people of Salina, KS must be a more distrustful bunch.  All of the usual parking lots were completely lit from front to back.  Finally we spotted a lovely, dark Tractor Supply.  We pulled around the back, set up the camper, and snuggled in for the night.

Right around 3:30am Tim and I were startled awake by a flash of red lights and the blast of a truck engine.  We literally leapt out of bed, certain we were about to be evacuated by the authorities.  After we stumbled around the camper for a few minutes making feeble attempts to pack something, we realized there was silence.  We decided the crisis was over and collapsed back into bed.

We woke to a flat van tire.  Thankfully we could still creep to Walmart Tire where they replaced both tires on that side while we changed and took advantage of the bathroom.  The girls and I made breakfast while Tim tried to fix the refrigerator that hadn’t been working either.  I had really been frustrated with the mess of living out of dripping coolers and food swimming in icy baths.  We had purposely bought a different camper with a larger fridge to avoid such a nuisance.

Now delayed again 2 hours, we finally hit the road!  Shortly before we hit CO, we pulled in for gas and one of the boys noticed one of our camper tires had completely shredded and we were riding the rim!  Thankful that the double axle kept us from an accident, we now settled in for our lunch time delay.  While the girls and I made lunch, poor Tim changed yet another tire.  We found a place to purchase a new spare and once again, set off.

We’ve made attempts to keep the kids from totally loosing themselves in electronic devices. There’s been a lot of complaints, but, thankfully, Tim and I don’t care. I often tell my kids it’s my mission in life to keep them doing anything other than technology. And whining does nothing because I don’t care if the phone, the iPad, and the Switch were run over by a car, thrown into a sinkhole, or any other event that could cause complete and total loss of said device. They serve their purpose but man, it’s a daily battle with those things - for myself too!

Anyway, we have been starting our day with the Streetlight Bible readings and we started with Esther just to try it out on a short book. We’ve loved it! Next is forced reading time (I know, I make it sound so ecviitng). Everyone, even Moriah has to read before there is ANY technology turned on. Abbey sometimes use her ginormous SAT study book to pass the time :). After that I read aloud from one of the books we’ve been going through or I’ll read from the book Tim and I have been reading from together. It’s a real thriller - we’ve been sorting through the Calvinist doctrine vs. Open Theisim vs Armenism. We’ve had some good discussions but my brain is tired afterwards. So much logical rhetoric and circular arguments! But it’s a topic we’ve been trying to sort out as believers and decided this was the time to do it - many hours in the car… We’ve also been enjoying Radio Theatre’s and audiobooks together and playing some car games. It has helped the time to pass with out completely melting brains.

Again, we weren’t going to make our destination for the night and our hopes for an earlier stop and hot showers slowly began to fade.  This is exactly why we rarely make reservations… but I spent the next TWO HOURS trying to find another stop.  Apparently Denver, CO area doesn’t have much to choose from for campgrounds.  Everything was either booked or was nothing more than a parking spot with vault toliets.  And we were really ready for showers.

The kids enjoyed the storm rolling over the last several miles of the Kansas prairie - we don’t often get to watch lightning in our mountains. And some of those bolts over the prairie were impressive. I wish we could have caught in a photo! Meanwhile I poured over maps and called campgrounds.  One nice man almost made an exception and put un into his last spot under repair and then

changed his mind… FINALLY I located a spot about 2 hours outside of Denver at Red Mountain RV park.  Hoping to make some real food to eat instead of grabbing hot dogs and pizza at Sams club or building sandwiches in the front seat while we drive!  AND TAKE A SHOWER :)  Looking forward to maybe doing something besides deal with mishaps and endless driving tomorrow…