So, you haven’t heard from me for a while. It’s not that nothing has happened; it’s just that I’ve been busy while it’s happening.
I believe I left you hanging on Tuesday night. Our “fixed” brakes weren’t working, and we were supposed to leave on Wednesday morning. My poor husband got up at 5:30 in the morning and went to get help on the brakes. He was back with good news before I even got up to finish packing.
We got packed, got the car loaded, and were ready to leave close to our (revised) target time of 10:00. We said goodbye to the kids, got in the car . . . and the car did not start. Seriously? I could hardly believe it!
So, Walter had to jumpstart it and then drive it back to the campus to see if we needed a new battery. Thank goodness it turned out to be a loose wire connected to the alternator. This car has had that exact same problem before. Only that time it was on the way back from Colorado instead of on the way there.
It was almost noon by the time we finally pulled out of the driveway. We decided to try an alternate route which required driving all the way past Fort Worth before turning north to Amarillo. It seemed to take forever! And Delilah (our GPS) was estimated that we wouldn’t arrive in Amarillo until after 11:00 p.m. Fortunately, Delilah was wrong about that, like she is about so many things.
We stopped in the tiny town of Childress for supper after going without food all day. Since it was a small town we felt we had to stop at the first likely eating place we found, because it might be the only one and we were starving! So we stopped at a Pizza Hut. I knew this was a bad idea because of my dairy and gluten restrictions, but I figured I could just get food from the salad bar and feel sorry for myself.
Guess what? No salad bar. So, I took a massive withdrawal from my LSA (Lifetime Stupidity Allowance) and ate pizza with husband. It was delicious. At the time, I thought it would be worth it. I was so wrong. I should have gone hungry.
We got to our hotel in Amarillo at about 9:00, and by the time we went to bed a couple of hours later, I felt very sick indeed. I stayed sick all night and all the next day, which made the drive up into Colorado a whole lot less enjoyable than it should have been. At least Walter enjoyed it! Here’s proof:

You can see how worried he was about the snakes here.

He actually was a log more worried about standing on the rotting boards surrounding the ice cream cone.
We were warmly welcomed by Evangeline and her mother Donita when we arrived yesterday afternoon. I was not nearly a sociable as I would have liked to be due to the fact that I just wanted to curl up and die.
This morning I felt much better. I have had some lingering symptoms, but not enough to stop me from participating in my friend Donita’s critique group. It was very intimidating to me because I had to come up with opinions on the spot and I felt like such a dummy. But it was so interesting to read what everyone else had written and they were able to give me some helpful feedback on the pages that I had brought.
After lunch, Walter and Mercy picked me up and we all went on an excursion to Garden of the Gods. I was dismayed to discover that my silver sun umbrella never made it into the car for this trip, so I was not able to venture as far afield as Mercy and Walter did because the sun was fierce!
So I found a nice shady spot where I could watch a very kind and patient gentleman help a succession of children learn the basics of rock climbing. It was actually very interesting.

We dropped Mercy off where she is staying and then came on back to our home base at Evangeline’s. She and her family went out for dinner, so Walter and I stayed in with Donita and ate supper in front of the TV while watching two episodes of Dr. Who. It’s been a great day! Maybe tomorrow I’ll be all the way better! And no, I’m not going to cheat on gluten again no matter what the temptation.
Parting Shot:

Spot the nutcases climbers in this photo.