Baths of Caracalla, Eat Your Heart Out!

LA/XC-5 DAYS FOUR, FIVE, AND SIX: POSTING FROM GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO

Three-day mileage from Des Moines, IA, to Grand Junction, CO: 990.8

Total LA/XC-5 mileage: 2,221.6

Road Music: Monday: CNN, MSNBC, and FOX to pre-game for Round One of Hillary vs. Donald; my “Deep Themes in Country Music” playlist (the likes of “Beer” by Lee Brice; “Beer Money” by Kip Moore; “Pretty Good at Drinkin’ Beer” by Billy Currington; “Brought to You by Beer” by Cole Swindle; “Free Beer” by Alina Smith.  Get the “theme”?); Tuesday: thoroughly enjoyed listening to politics on Sirius most of the day for post-mortem  on Donald’s historically inane performance; my entire Dierks Bentley library, stoking up for Red Rocks; Wednesday: Shhh . . . quiet.  “One-with-Nature” day, out of respect for the Rocky Mountains; Mets vs. Marlins (Mets win — again! — drawing ever closer to that Wild Card berth . . .)

Weather leaving Des Moines Monday morning: 64 degrees and clearest
blue sky in history

Weather arriving Grand Junction Wednesday night: 70 degrees, just as blue

Three-day state tally: 3 (Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado)

Gas money to date: $221.94

Back when I was doing my “Grand Tour” of Europe between junior and senior years in college, word had it among the Eurail Pass crowd that when in Rome, the place to be was the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla.  Opera under the stars at that spectacular site was reputed to be the most moving and romantic experience in . . . I don’t know,  the world?  So my friend Jeff and I went — not that

we could have given a —- about opera, but it seemed like a promising place to take Alice and Fran, the two girls we were traveling with at the time.  Well, Baths, you’ve met your match!

Tuesday night, Carol and I, along with locals Kristen and Dave (Kristen is the daughter of old friends Lang and Marilyn), finally made our pilgrimage to Red Rocks, the much-ballyhooed open-air concert venue in Morrison, Colorado, 10 miles west of Denver.  With its amphitheater sliced dramatically into the mountains, Red Rocks has been

near the top of my bucket list for quite some time . . . and it blew away expectations: huge boulders, dramatically lighted; stars twinkling above us; ten thousand people on a

Rocky Mountain high, hands waving in unison — and a knockout performance by Dierks Bentley.  His “Drunk On a Plane” encore (yes, that’s on my “Deep Themes” playlist, too), with the nose and fuselage of a 737 rolling out onstage, brought the crowd to its knees.

On the drive up to the amphitheater, Carol was suffering from altitude sickness (the real kind, not the kind I had in Zermatt two years ago when I overdid the beers Night One at

Papperla) and was feeling a bit woozy, so Dave — who comes off liked a laid-back Coloradan but, in a pinch, showed his De-troit roots — told security he was our Uber driver, and dropped us right at the gate.  Smooth move.

Followed up our Kristen-and-Dave-and-kids-and-dogs-and-cats visit with another oldies-but-goodies connection: brunch at The Original Pancake House in Denver Wednesday morning with Lucy, my old high school friend and junior

prom date, and her husband Shel.  Great company, great meal, great times, and great send-off into the Rockies. 

So.  Yes.  Carol has joined the Beagle Man Tour.  Met her at the Denver airport Tuesday mid-afternoon.  And how’s that working out?  I’m not going to make any petty mention of her telling me the “right way” to set my GPS; her not allowing me to follow up the Dierks concert with Dierks road music all the next day, because of the altitude sickness, or her tailgating trucks at 80 mph going downhill in the Rockies.  I just want to give an early, honest response to how

she’s reacting to the marvels of cross-country road tripping I’ve raved about over the years.  And mostly it’s been pretty good.  She did concede that parts of the drive through the Rockies (we covered Denver to Grand Junction yesterday) were drop-dead gorgeous, though 30 minutes of it would have sufficed, she added, rather than the four hours we did.  And she is beginning to be impressed by our country’s vastness, though at times she implies that “vastness” is not that far removed from “boringness.”

Today we continue on I-70 West through central Utah.  For my money, the other-worldly landscape along that stretch of interstate is as good as it gets.  If that doesn’t knock her socks off, I suppose we can put her on a plane to Santa Monica 🙂 .

RANDOM ROAD NOTES:

•  At Waggy Tail Dog Park in North Platte, NE, I said to Kemba, “Where’s the ball?  Kemba, we need the ball.”  My dog kept staring at me like I was nuts.  Then I noticed I already had it cradled in my Chuck-it.

•  Road signs mis-read from afar (SJC’s favorite department):  Nose Alert (it was actually “Noise Alert”)

•  Not one, but two water fetch sessions today for my lucky dog: at a picture-perfect rapids in Eagle, CO, and at Canyon View dog park at our overnight here in Grand Junction.  (Will be returning there just as soon as I finish this post.)

•  Pleasant surprise last night:  Stopped for dinner at a trattoria/pizzeria/bar in a strip mall around the corner from our La Quinta, not expecting much.  But everything about our experience at Enzo was perfetto.

I PLAN TO POST AS CLOSE TO DAILY AS POSSIBLE WHILE KEMBA AND I ARE ON THE ROAD. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY: MAN PLANS, GOD LAUGHS.  🙂   OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND INSTAGRAM