Spending Night at 6000 feet

Wednesday – Had a real hard rain during the night. Sounded like we were in the middle of a war zone. By morning the rain had stopped but it was very foggy out. In fact while driving the fog acted like rain. Again reminding us that we haven’t bought windshield wipers yet.
How can we keep forgetting? Senior moments?
Still haven’t gotten used to getting ready to hit the road. With the Alfa we have a long check list of things that have to be done before we can get on the road. With this it is just unplug and disconnect the utilities outside and inside just move the coffee pot, put away the laptop and go. No levelers, no air bags, no satellite, no slides and no rearranging furniture to fit on the slides.
Once the windows cleared up we saw we really hadn’t been missing anything.

Gives meaning to "On a clear day I can see forever."
Lots of flat land with lots of crops and grain elevators off in the distance. Did see a different crop today. Sunflowers. A whole big field of them.
And some weird corn. The leaves were all gone – just the stalks and ears left. Locusts? The leaves are harvested for something? Don’t know.
Did see some neat road signs.
I didn’t think these were around any more. Remember seeing lots of them when I was a kid. Especially the rattlesnake ones. But we forgot to stop. Gee – maybe next time.
Then we started seeing the signs that said “When flashing the road would be closed in so many miles.” Then at the next exit would be arms that could come down and close the roads. We debated what they could be used for: tornados, prairie fires, fog, blizzards? Just looked them up and they are mainly for blizzards. They allow the DOT (department of transportation) to close the roads in increments to keep the travelers safe and to not overload the towns with travelers. This is what I found –
“Staged or phased opens and closures are a concept that helps alleviate congestion in smaller communities when the highway is closed. This practice has been used for years in eastern Colorado and is now being implemented in our mountain areas. During a closure, when a town or community “fills up” with traffic waiting for the road to reopen, the closure is then pushed back to a pre-determined location farther “upstream”. This helps allow local traffic and emergency responders keep access around town. “

Sounds like a good system.
We spent most of the day slowly climbing towards the Rockys. Here where we stopped for the day in Walsenburg, CO. Staying in an RV park that time has forgotten. We are the only travelers here. The rest are mobile homes from the 50s and 60s when the main road passed through here. We passed through a lot of “Why?” towns today. A few scattered buildings along the highway. Why is there a town there? And why are people still living there?
As we were nearing the end of today’s journey we saw some really pretty clouds. Almost a religious look to them.

Until tomorrow - crossing the mountains - should be pretty.