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Issue #171, Epic Road Trip 2018, June 2, 2018




June 2, 2018 Start of the 2018 Epic Road Trip (Route followed in red string, above. Blue string shows Epic Road trip 2017)

Fourmile Canyon is calm, and sunlight streams through our living room windows. The rats - reduced to one. I had to put down Orbit, one of our two pet rats, as he had a tumor that was increasing in size, and we did not feel comfortable leaving him in that condition with the Fox’s. So we buried Orbit in the evening, and took General up to Jenny Fox’s house, where he will spend the next eight weeks in the company of a Chinchilla and a Sugar Glider. Phoenix forgot the bedding, so we had to drive up there twice. He crafted two different ‘manuals for care’; one for General and one for our frogs, Turkey and Rooster, which we left up at Zeppelin Inoue’s house. The Inoue’s dog Pickles kept chomping on a squeaky toy as we put fresh water in the tank and introduced them to their new home.

Hummingbirds are flashing around the feeder. The lawn is mowed, the periphery of the house cleared of vegetation in case the lush growth from recent rains dries up and fire danger becomes a problem. Peter MacGill and Cathee Courter are staying here while we are gone. It’s been a rush of cleaning and packing for the past few days as we are about to embark on a new style of travel - Cricket camping.

Kids playing about our camping rig, ready to go!

As we did last year, we made a stop in Boulder to say goodbye to Gene at his house. Robert Power was there with him, and we stood outside and showed them our travel rig, the Cricket with bikes on top attached to the Volvo, and took some photos, before saying goodbye and heading towards I-70. Before we even left Boulder’s city limits I had to pull the car over and adjust the straps on the bikes, since the wind seemed to be pushing them around too much. The kids immediately descended into their tablets, and we headed out of Boulder.

Goodbye to Boulder
On a Saturday in June
Heading to Kansas

Our covered wagon
Adorned with aluminum
Instead of canvas

Paige, Phoenix, Orion and Jonathan before we left Bouder

In rear-view mirror
Peaks receding in distance
Compass points to the east

Frogs and rats now safe
In other people’s’ houses
Time to hit the road

Windmills crowd the plains
In eastern Colorado
Exploiting the breeze

We saw many windmills on this portion of our trip.

We left the lemons
Swaying in kitchen basket:
Party for fruit flies

Watching the gas gauge
Precipitously dropping -
Bicycle wind drag

Lunch in Arriba
Next to a noisy diesel
We fight over cake

Phoenix's carefully crafted calendar anticipating all our dates and stops.

Black cows and green grass
The occasional road kill
Paper stuck in fence

Windmills and Jesus
Rising above Kansas plains
Salvation in sight

Robert Power and Gene Langlois, June 2, 2018