Saturday September 10, 2011: Into Colorado

        As we left Laramie before 9 o’clock, skirted Cheyenne, and headed towards Denver. Even though we were headed to the “Mile High City”, we were headed down as Laramie is at 7200 feet. As we entered Colorado, I noticed that everything was getting greener and more populated. There were even fields of corn that look like it was ready to be picked. The soil in Wyoming was rocky and sandy and only good for meager at best grazing of cattle. Then we suddenly encountered more lanes and tons of traffic through Denver. We used our trusty Garmin GPS to assure us that we were on the right path. Since we were at Wal-Mart the night before, we needed to dump out our tanks before the trailer sat at Rachel’s. We located a dump station at a shell station about 1 exit from Rachel’s. Maneuvering 53 feet of rig in a busy gas station requires planning, so I stopped near the entrance and had Jan scout out the place. She said the dump station was in the back and to go to the left side of the station to get to it. Unfortunately, a pickup truck was stopped at the air pump and blocked my way, so I had to stop and wait…and wait….and wait. He was using the air pump to clean his dusty sander and power tools and must have been doing a very thorough job. I finally got out of my truck and asked him when he thought he’d be done! We did maneuver into position and dumped our tanks. It was free with a fill-up, so we filled up there, too. This required more planning and maneuvering. We finally got to Rachel’s early in the afternoon. She thought we might be able to park the trailer in the driveway as it was long enough. I took one look at the driveway entrance and said, “no way” as it was very narrow with a mailbox on one side and a chain link fence on the other. We parked it successfully in the front of the house, but of course, it took up the whole front.