Green River Part 1: The Long Drive West

Vacation approached very slowly on Friday, June 3. Both of us worked semi-normal days with mine coinciding with a deadline that existed only because I was leaving for two weeks. Minutes were hours, hours were days. Or so it felt. Finally, we began our journey west after a quick dinner at the fruit tea place that Lucas enjoys so much. As we approached our first interstate, I asked a fateful pair of questions, "Do you have your spare key? Do you want to go get it?" I mention these questions because they become important in a later tale. Both questions were answered in the negative and we began our journey away from Nashville.

Several hours brought us to Illinois that night. The next morning, we motored past our companions who were having car issues. In Missouri, we inherited their trailer and the lack of speed that goes with it. Missouri led to Kansas, which made me think of my friend Andy and his cross country adventure with another friend. Kansas was the only state Andy was allowed to drive in. Small hills became small rises, which became flat highway for miles. The clouds grew dark as the radio warned of tornados and hail. High winds, rain and hail followed quickly. Welcome to Kansas. Mark and Kerry hid under an overpass. We stopped at an exit, letting the weather decide it was our dinnertime. The storm cleared and we forged onward, calling it a night less than an hour's drive from Colorado.

Morning brought first glimpses of the mountains after we crossed the border. At one of the rest areas, a nice gentleman wearing a blue polo shirt and a matching blue speedo struck up a conversation with us to see where we were headed with our gear-laden trailer. He'd been on the same stretch of river at 30 or 40K. He said the two spots to watch out for were Wire Fence and Three Fords rapids. We checked those out in the guidebook as we continued toward the mountains. Except for occasional ventures into second gear, the journey through the mountains was uneventful. We found whitewater on the other side. First Clear Creek, then the Eagle River and finally the Colorado River, which we followed for quite a while.

Mark and Kerry followed the Colorado all the way to Moab. They opted for the cheap hotel. We opted for the cheaper camping and headed for Green River State Park to sleep near the river that would be our home for the next two weeks.