A plane, a truck and a shuttle bus - Oh My!!! Roadtrip memories

Being in Colorado reminds me of the first time I ever visited here. It was a very long time ago. I flew here. From Tulsa. It was a 45 minute flight and Denver is an hour behind Tulsa so I got to Denver 15 minutes before I left Tulsa. It was easy to fly then. I boarded the plane without so much as a patdown. They didn't xray me to make sure I was naked under there, they didn't search any of my bags and nobody had any interest in seeing my feet. It wasn't a jet, only a prop plane with about a dozen people on it and we could see the ground the whole time. I might have been scared, but I was going to meet my husband who was a truck driver. It was Thanksgiving week and he had to work so I flew out and went on the truck with him. He isn't my husband anymore and I don't think he drives a truck anymore, but just for this story, I will tell it how it used to be. By the time I was off the plane in Denver and into the terminal my husband had my bag and away we went. We took the airport shuttle to the truckstop where his truck was parked and we bagan our drive across the Rockies. I was flabbergasted. If you have never seen the Rockies, you must. No pictures would do it justice.

We wanted to see Yellowstone park but the government was broke and all the National Parks were closed. We also didn't get to see the Grand Canyon for the same reason. We drove through more huge mountians all the way to Bellingham Washington and then back down through Oregon, and California. We spend Thanksgiving Day in Reno. We gambled and ate a very good turkey dinner on the casino buffett.

We weren't able to see any national parks, but I picked up rocks everywhere we went and used them to get an A+ in the earth science class I was taking at the time.

Late on Thanksgiving night, we were rolling through the desert and I was sleeping in the back when my husband started calling me to wake up and come look. We were nearing Las Vegas,

It looked sort of like this but much later at night.

We didn't stop in Vegas because we had places to be. We did however, stop at the Hoover Dam. I have to say again, this was a long time ago. Back then, the highway went right over the dam, now there is a bridge across the canyon. We got there about 3am and it was completely deserted. Of course, the Welcome Center was closed, but there was no security that we saw.

We were there at night and the lights were beautiful.  We parked in the large lot in the bottom right of the picture.  The place
was absolutely deserted.

We never saw one person and no cars went over while we were out there. On one of the concrete pylons along the dam, there was an elevator. It was a strange moment. We looked at each other and he pushed the button to open the door and it opened. We both got on without saying a word. My husband held the door open as we stood there looking at each other in a silent game of chicken, until I stepped out and he followed.

If I remember right, we slept for awhile before driving on to where ever we had to be, maybe somewhere in New Mexico.

We made it home that weekend, and as always we were sad our trip was over. The very first road trip we ever took together, we both literally cried when it was over ... we were very young and it was a great trip. Maybe I will write that one another time.