After the West

Woke up a bit early … which was good.  We wanted to get to the airport with enough time to avoid stress.  We took advantage of the continental breakfast at the hotel (you could make your own waffles!  we didn’t) and packed up for good and hit the road South at 7:42.  Cheyenne was already bustling and the interstate had more traffic than we’d experienced all trip.  What was going on was that it was Saturday morning and everyone in that part of the world was going to “the game” … which for some people was a college football game and for plenty of others a high school game.

We entered Colorado about 10 miles South of Cheyenne and the Rockies appeared on our right, shining white in the early morning sun.  Farms started up, hugging the interstate and then spreading out some as we kept on South.  We passed the exit for Fort Collins and crossed the South Platte and the farms became interspersed with factories.  We saw the first huge building we’d seen in almost a week, which was the Budweiser bottling plant, then the second which was a Harley-Davidson factory.  Passed the turnoff for Lyons and we were retracing our steps, now East on 470 and then the exit onto Peña Boulevard, back to the Hertz car return at 9:10.  Red had taken us 2040 amazing miles of twisting and straight roads with no complaints and had proven to be a noble car.

We sprawled over an empty bank of seats in DIA while we finished off the bits of food we had left, then got our boarding passes for jetBlue 494 and took the train to the terminals.  Crowded into the security checkpoint with a million other people, and then we had time for a local beer at the Denver Chophouse and Brewery near our gate.  Boarding time came and a little after noon we were in the air and headed back for Logan, where we took a cab home.  That was it for the trip … we had a great time!