Journey to Wheaton Labs Day 2 started pretty well. Up and on the road by 7:30 am, a little later than I planned but not by much. Kansas is much prettier in the daytime. Many people think of Kansas as flat. That is mostly true for the East-West drive, but we do have the Flint Hills which are beautiful and the North-South drive has it’s fair share of reasonable hills. No mountains but there is definitely elevation change. In the western part of the state I was driving through with a little bit of imagination you can picture what it might have been like hundreds of years ago, covered in grass 20 feet tall and herds of Bison so big you couldn’t see them all. Too bad all that is mostly gone except for a few places where they have protected it.
Soon enough I entered eastern Colorado. The scenery changes very quickly and it gets colder, you start to go up in elevation as you come closer to Denver. Fortunately my route passed by Denver but it did go partway on a three-lane highway between Denver and Fort Collins that eventually went down to two lanes. If you like a leisurely scenic drive avoid traveling that highway at all costs. Even in the late morning on a Thursday it was wall-to-wall traffic. Not as bad as the corridor from Oklahoma City, OK to Dallas, TX, but pretty bad.
The good news is that once past Fort Collins everything thinned out and the traffic became lighter and sparser as I neared Wyoming. Wyoming has the aura of the Marlboro Man, riding his horse across vast, untamed prairie. There are wide open spaces and some mountains. A very pretty drive through lots of small towns and spread-out ranches. I could easily see myself living in Wyoming – in the Summer. Winters there are pretty harsh from what I understand and I’m not really a winter guy.
Once I finally got into Montana it was gorgeous. The whole trip on Thursday had very variable weather and temperatures through every state and time zone. I went from moderate rains and 50 degrees to sunny and 72 degrees, back down to the mid 30’s and rainy again and it was happening about every 30-60 minutes. Very interesting. I finally got into Billings, MT, the Capital, about 7:30 pm. I was checked into the Sleep Inn by a nice, friendly young lady named Alicia. I spoke on the phone with the lovely Miss Mercy and then got settled in for the night.