From my fuel-up on the way home from work last night to parking at the motel in Hays, KS: 461. That makes for 461 of the most boring miles a girl could travel. At one point, I had to stop to take pictures just to show how desolate the country I was driving through was. But, I'm getting ahead of myself...
My first stop today was to see my brother in Las Animas. Here is the lovely little place my dear brother has been calling home for the last year. I arrived at 11:01, which meant that I got to go through "check in" (think double barbed wire fences, metal detectors, pat-down searches and multiple thick, computerized, locked doors. Oh, and guards everywhere.) Anyway, I got through the check-in process, and had to wait for almost an hour to see him because of count. At least there weren't plexi-glass "windows" and "telephones" to contend with.
Our visit was going great... and then two hours after I got there the guards at the desk inside the visitation room made an announcement: "Does anyone have a gold Taurus?" My brother, ever the smart aleck, responds "I do." We both looked over at the guard desk to see if they heard him, and if they were going to get upset. I'm pretty sure he wasn't heard, but the guard chose that moment to look up, point to me and say, "Come here." I looked behind me, sure he was talking to someone else, since a girl behind me had just giggled. She didn't move so I looked back. He pointed to me again. And yes, I looked behind me again before pointing to myself, "me?" He nodded, I went.
I got to the desk and he throws this paper in my face, "Is this you?" The paper was the form I had to fill out before entering the facility. "Yes," I replied, confused. He is none too happy with me. I meanwhile have no idea what is going on. In no uncertain terms, he tells me that if this ever happens again, he'll cut my visit short. I don't want to seem impertinent by asking, if what ever happens again. He finally tells me that my car is unlocked. WHAT??? "Do I get to come back?" He tells me again, that "this time" he'll let me, but if I ever do this again (like I planned to leave my car open with all of my stuff inside) he'll make me leave. (Gulp)
You have to understand that there are several signs posted as you're entering the facility that tell you that you should not only not leave your valuables in your car, but that you should also lock it. You also have to understand something about me: I am fastedious about locking my car. Seriously, the joke is that even if I'm only going inside for five minutes, in an extremely safe area of town, I lock my car. Call it a weird OCD type of mental disconnect, if you like. The fact is, I lock my car.
Well, upset Mr. Guard Man escorts me out of the building. I can tell that he is peeved with me, because he proceeds to completely ignore me. He meets up with another guard and they have a short conversation about the paperwork not mentioning a gold Taurus, but it has to be a visitor, because the second guard doesn't recognize the car.
They then leave the building. I have no idea what to do, so I follow them out. They both start heading toward the Taurus, that is in the opposite direction of my car. I stammer out something about my car being over there. "Just stay there," is all I'm told. I just barely keep from saluting, "yes sir."
They do their thing at the Taurus, and then head to where my car is. I follow, but for whatever reason, don't go near my car. I really don't have any idea what that was about, I just knew that I was better off not touching it.
G1 is nice enough to not only lock the offending car door, but to also double check my other doors. I thank them both multiple times for checking on my car, I mean, all the stuff for my road-trip is in the car. Albeit 95% of my stuff is in the trunk, but all someone would need is access to the car to get to all of it. Yikes.
After that odd incident, G2 walked me back inside, allowing me to bypass a second round of check-in, since I only walked outside with them. Whew!
And then, my brother and I continued on with our visit. We even played Yatzee, where we didn't realize we were making up new scoring rules, until almost finishing our second round of the game. Doh!
From there, I drove through the most desolate portions of both Colorado and Kansas for 2 hours.
Here's the view in front of my car...
.... which looked oddly similar to the view out the rear of my car...
Fortunately, there was some farm equipment and some lovely clouds out the side-views of the car, otherwise I don't know what I would have done.
Oh... and then I finally got to Burlington, CO. (Of course, I'm thinking that I can't believe I'm still in Colorado after all that farmland...) Which is about the time I discovered that I had a guest 
riding with me.
riding with me. I'm not sure if this was one bug or two. I only know that I've never experienced bugs with such strong desires to travel that they'll cling (post mortem) to my windshield wipers. I did check before leaving Burlington and found that several of this bug's friends had hitched a ride on my grill. I was so grossed out that I didn't want to take more pictures. Especially when I realized that I had to figure out a way to pry them off. EW.
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