Day 18 - On to Denver

Hi all,
This is a photo of Ken taken at the Borlund museum, he's standing next to Gutzon Borlund and his son Lincoln. On Gutzons death, Lincoln finished sculpting Mt. Rushmore.
Such tremendous talent both father and son.
Today we left South Dakota in a torrential rain, we had terrific weather the past few days but today temp 46 as Ken packed the car. Tonight we pulled into Denver in torrential rain, rain in Wyoming as well. Ken spoke to a farmer at one of our pit stops, the farmer said the rain was much needed as they had 20 days without any.
Wyoming is a beautiful state, many mountains that are flat topped, some areas arid, others are being farmed. I expected to see lots of wildlife but saw none. Still haven't seen the home were the deer and the antelope play so have no idea what they play, tag or poker.
We're staying in a nice hotel and apparently a western attire convention is in town. When we were riding down the elevator, two women wearing huge turquoise necklaces entered, boy I was wearing my new Indian necklace and felt like I was wearing childrens' jewelry. Everyone in the lobby is wearing beautiful leather cowboy boots, yours truly was wearing sandals. S

This was the view from our motel this morning just before we left Keystone, SD. As I hope you can see, it was raining and we were on quite a hill, overlooking Keystone. I had punched Denver into our GPS before we left, and before you know it, it was taking us on the wrong road AGAIN! The GPS put us on the mountain road that would have taken us through the wildlife area and would have taken us a couple of hours out of our way.

Finally managed to get the GPS straightened out and off we headed for Cheyenne, WY. We had planned to drive all the way to Denver today after checking the milage from Keystone to Cheyenne and Cheyenne to Denver. Google indicated we were about 300 miles from Denver, which was our desired limit. Well, Google must have made our GPS for this portion of the drive. We actually drove a little over 400 miles today, but we got caught in torrential down pours, construction, sunshine, and finally, 75 mph speed limits. At 75 mph, 400 miles came quickly. We arrived in Denver during another torrential downpour, which made driving the Vette a challenge. Thank God for the new tires.

South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado have such a wide variety of landscapes from rolling plains, buttes, crops, and farms. Really saw some beautiful scenes today, between rain storms. Lots of bicycle riders around Mt. Rushmore and out of South Dakota, and also lots of motorcycles. The motorcycle riders really had some tough riding in the rain and in the construction areas. One pair of bikers stopped right in the middle of the road in one of the torrential rains and I was lucky to even see them and not hit them.

Finally reached Denver in the rain and the GPS actually brought us directly to our Motel. Its always a challenge with this GPS. Checking into the motel, I thought I had landed in cowboy heaven. The convention has its share of guys and gals that like to party and the bar in the lobby was packed with western boots, clothes, and cowboy hats.



The scenery has been remarkable, and at one spot, I pointed out a butte with a cowboy on a horse overlooking the highway. It wasn't until we passed them that we realized they were only plywood cutouts. Oh well, it looked interesting from a distance.

Will see my cousin Sharon on Sunday and hopefully, my Aunt and Uncle too. Then on to Pueblo on Monday. The adventure continues... K