"The sky is blue, and all the leaves are green! My heart's as full as a baked potato! I think you'll know exactly what I mean, when I say it's a Schpadoinkle Day!" ~ Cannibal the Musical
The RV we needed to sell has been sold! Woohoo! We are finally FREE! How did we spend our first day of freedom? Well, Let me tell you an incredible story of "what-the-heck?"
We sold the RV, paid our storage for a few more months, went shopping, fueled up, and got on the road. Good bye Grand Junction! Good bye Mesa County! Good bye friends! What a wonderful feeling to be leaving the Grand Valley behind us! FREEDOM!!! We all felt light and joyous and ready for adventure. The children were allowed to play on their tablets (Roran has his own now) for the first part of our drive out of town. Hermione sat on the dash while the kittens napped on our bed. I stretched out, feet on the dash by Hermione, and watched the miles of wasteland roll by. We started out with the hope of staying the night at an RV park near Ouray, then saying goodbye to family as we made our way over to Denver. Driving through Delta felt refreshing... one more old news town behind us. Olathe was all wound up over some festival or other. Nothing uncommon for that town. So what if there are a million cars parked at the fair grounds? That doesn't bother us anymore! We're just driving by! Going through Montrose felt, as always, like an overweight, depressed spirit had sat it's might plump rump down on the town and expelled the odor of rich cow dung... so, the normal way Montrose feels to us. Then, the tiny town of Colona went by. Blink! It's passed us. Watch out for deer, next 5 miles. Look at that sunset changing the mountains to pink and purple! Gorgeous. Ridgway Reservoir seems pretty busy tonight. Looks like the pride of stretching and expanding RVs has settled down for the night at Dutch Charlie. Will you look at the sunset on the water?! I've always loved the way it looks and feels when you come over that last hill into Ridgway. I may never live there again but, it's the feeling of home. Small town surrounded by mountains with a beautiful river bumbling through. Bye Ridgway! See you tomorrow! Oh, look! There's Orvis! We love that place!!! Yay! The RV park we were looking for! Aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnd... They are sold out. Not a single place to sleep there. Huh, well, I guess we'll head back to Ridgway and check at Orvis. Sold out. Now the fun of our adventure turns into the, "I can't believe this!" part of our adventure.
We decided to pull into the only hotel in town. I thought it might be night to sleep in a new bed, take a nice, long, hot shower. Well, it wasn't going to happen there. Sold out. Okay, we could stay at my dad's right? It's 9:30 pm. He's asleep and waking him would probably not be a nice thing to do, so we'll move on. Okay, so maybe we won't have to go to far back... right?
Colona yielded nothing but closed signs.
Okay... all the way back to the fart filled air of Montrose. At least it's only one night and we'll be gone in the morning. James pulls The Bus up to the first hotel in town and I go rushing inside to get a room. It's 10:00 pm by now and the kids are tired and getting grumpy. Staying anywhere would be great. Guess what... sold out. Okay, we're staying positive. There's plenty of hotels intown and a KOA. There has to be a room somewhere. Try the next hotel. Sold out. The next? Sold out. Sold out. Sold out. That festival we passed in Olathe seems to be bigger than we thought. It's bothering us now. Every single motel and hotel and RV park in Montrose is, you guessed it, SOLD OUT.
Back through Olathe and onto Delta. There HAS to be something there. It would be awful to have to go all the way back to Grand Junction! We JUST got out! Delta... sold out... sold out... sold out...
Well... how ironic. We were so freaking excited to leave! We were over joyed to be gone! Remember? We waved goodbye and said never again! No! Damn. We're going back.
So, here we are, at the Days Inn in Grand Junction, CO. Right back where we started. Apparently there was something here we needed to finish before we could leave. Like write this post...? Maybe. Or maybe, this trip through the western slope (aka the Azkaban of Colorado) was part of our final farewell tour, reminding us why we are so ready to leave. We've been to every place we've loved and hated. Shared memories with each other as we passed this place or that. (We met again at the airport... there's where we had our first date... that's where Alice, our daughter, was born...that's where we had our engagement photo session... ) Maybe we had to relieve the joys and pains of our pasts, here in the place we now hold so much negativity for, in order to let go, to be finally, completely, truly free.
We're getting ready to leave the hotel now. I'm ready to say goodbye to my mom and dad. James is ready to say goodbye to his family. We're ready to begin. Again.
Goodbye Grand Junction and thank you for being here when we needed you. Good bye Delta and we're glad we never spent much time there. Goodbye Montrose and we're grateful we were there at the same time so we could come together and create our wonderful life as a family. Goodbye western slope. We'll see you. We're off!