The Great Divide

Some days you just know are going to be good days.  I had been waiting all week for an item I bought on Ebay to arrive at our host's home.  The seller was supposed to have shipped it on Monday, in fact he emailed me that he would ship it on Monday.  If he had done that it would have been in Rawlins the day we arrived, but, of course, it was not.  I found out he did not ship it until Wednesday, which would mean it wouldn't arrive, if I was lucky, until Friday sometime via UPS.  Well, Friday was our departure date.  We needed to be in Ft. Collins, CO to do our drug screen test for Amazon.com before 4pm on Friday.  We decided we needed to leave by 10am at the latest to be sure we made it to Ft. Collins in time.

Around 9:50am there was no UPS, so I unhooked the electrical cord feeding power to the Newell, and went in to tell Ben that we were leaving, and to give him $10 to forward the box.  Just as Ben opened the front door I heard the UPS truck pull up.  Talk about timing!  5 minutes later we would have been a few miles down the road.  When things work out like that you just know it's a good day!

So, with my Ebay item in hand I jumped into the Newell, fired the DD up and we headed south to I-80, and then east toward Cheyenne.  Our plan was to drive I-80 to I-25 south and return to the Terry Bison Ranch that we overnighted at back in May, park the coach, and then drive the T'Bird south 37 miles to Ft. Collins and our drug screening appointment.

Our big obstacle today was the Continental Divide.  On our trip west back in may the drive from Cheyenne to Rock Springs kicked my butt....the climb up to Lincoln Summit from Cheyenne is around 30 miles, and a 3,000' foot elevation gain...that wasn't the hard part.  After the summit we hit a head wind all the way to Rock Springs...even though we were going downhill it felt like uphill because of the stiff headwind.

Fortunately, going west to east has been a whole different story for us.  We have had a tail wind most of the time since we left Vancouver, and the coach has climbed like a cheetah since we left Twin Falls, ID, plus our mpg has gone up about 1 mile per gallon conservatively.  Today was no different.  The climb out of Rawlins was gentle, and I rarely shifted down into 4th gear until the final 3 mile climb to Lincoln Summit when I was able to hold it in 3rd at 40 mph. From there it was literally all downhill to the Cheyenne junction with I-25.  We hit Terry Bison Ranch at 12:50pm....perfect!  That is the easiest 156 miles I have driven in a long time, and a total contrast to our run the opposite direction 4 months ago.

After plugging the coach in we jumped in the car and made the run down to Ft. Collins in 3o minutes....it's fun to drive 80 once in a while!  After parting with our urine samples we headed over to a Mexican restaurant we had spied on the way in called Zquila.  Of course we sat on the patio, and quickly ordered two pints of Fat Tire Ale to chase the fresh chips and even fresher salsa.  This is by far the best Mexican food we have had since we were in Vancouver, WA.

We arrived back at Terry Bison Ranch around 4:30 with big smiles on our faces.....what a great day of easy travel, and we scored some great Mexican food to boot!

Tomorrow will head up to Cheyenne to visit the capital and a couple of museums.

Thanks for stopping by!