Yet again, Rich woke up.

From our drive yesterday, you remember that we beat it out of Colorado ahead of some pretty nasty storms.  We had heard on the TV that tornados had touched down outside of Ft Collins and Greeley.

Our hotel for the evening turned out to be a renovated thing from the 1950s.  I was reluctant to go in, but this is where we had reservations and everyone was standing in line.  I signed in and got the key for the room.  It was an okay room for the night.  You would think that a Best Western would be safe.

There was a lady at the desk when I got there.  It was hard to tell what she looked like.  She was small in stature with a ton of white hair and dark clothes.  She spoke kind of slurred and in funny tones.  She apparently was getting two rooms, one for herself and one for her driver.  That must have been him out in the Mercedes outside.  She said they were driving from Connecticut to California.  Was she someone famous or just strange?

This morning, we went out to walk down to breakfast and the parking lot had several vehicles from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.  These are the guys who are the professional storm chasers.  Dr. Josh Wurman was sitting off to the side with someone and a computer going over data.  Dr. Wurman invented the Doppler radar on wheels to chase storms.  You might know him better from the show called Stormchasers on the Discovery channel.  He’s the guy that gets to tells Sean what to do and usually yells at him.  All I got were pictures of the trucks, but no people.

We had what breakfast we could find at the hotel and headed out for the next stop.  The road construction was pretty frequent and that slowed up down some.  We stopped for gas and lunch, but kept moving east.  Tonight, we planned to stay in Des Moines, IA.  This was expected to be a 7 hour drive.

We arrived to find that our hotel was very nice with all the amenities that we had planned.  Then it was time for dinner.  We had been through here last year on our way to New Mexico and found this BBQ place with awesome food.  Rich liked it for the pickles.  Cactus Bob’s was off the next exit and we headed down the road to check it out again. 

Before we got in the door, we could smell the food.  It was heavenly.  However, we had to then decide how hungry we were and what we could eat.  I got the The Big Pig, which was a pork sandwich with beans and baked apples.  Rick just got chicken strips because he wasn’t that hungry.  Rich got chicken strips and ribs with slaw and apples AND a chili.  I ate all of mine.  It was still awesome. 

Rich just had to buy a jar of their pickled pickles.  He assured me they were sweet and not dill.  I took one bit and about spit it out. I hate dill pickles!  I threw the other half on his tray.  I think he thought I was throwing it at him. Yes, you could taste the sweet and sour, but the dill was definitely there.  I won’t be stealing any of those pickles.

Well, with the drive, it was a slow news day.  I did have pictures though.  Tomorrow will probably be barren of photos, but we will be home.