Monday, August 9, 1999 - Trip to Colorado

After great intentions of leaving for Colorado early last Monday morning, we fi­nally left…at 8:00 p.m.  That was because Larry first had to go to Norfolk to collect a check from a customer, and then in the afternoon he had new tires put on the Blazer I would be driving from Denver to Arapahoe, Nebraska.  On the Blazer was hitched the pop-up camper, and onto the pop-up camper was hitched a little trailer loaded with a four-wheeler.  Larry then drove the Blazer train up onto the slant trailer and fastened it all down good and tight.

Before leaving Columbus, we stopped at the Total gas station on the Boulevard to fill with diesel, and the owner, who is a friend of ours, came out pumping both fists in the air in a victory charade, because we were finally going.  Of course, all our friends knew of the aborted trip the second week of June, so there were a grand plenty of obliging friends asking Larry if he’d remembered to call ahead and make sure the cars we were going to haul were ready.  (snicker, snicker)

Thinking that we’d leave in the afternoon and stop at a park somewhere for sup­per, we had put a pan of soup and a bowl of fruit salad in the pop-up camper.  Then Larry took it to the shop to wire the lights and brakes properly…and our supper went, too, whether willingly or reluctantly, I cannot tell.  Suppertime came and went, with no signs of Larry’s return.  So we fixed a different supper, planning to put the first supper into the icebox to save for the following evening.

Guess what?  We remembered to put the salad in a large thermos, but we forgot to put the soup into the icebox.  So the soup was spoilt before Tuesday’s suppertime ever arrived.  A few of us remembered the salad, and the thermos kept it fresh until the next day; but several people forgot all about it and were woebegone when they later saw Teddy pouring the curdled remains into a big bush, where several birds were later seen to exit cross-eyed, feathers a-ruffle, beaks a-twist.

Since it was hot and muggy out, and we’d all been rushing around loading heaps and piles of paraphernalia, we were dying of thirst by the time we got to Grand Island.  We stopped at a truck stop for something cold to drink.  We paid for our purchases, came back out, climbed into the pickup, drove off…and left Teddy, who’d been paying for something of his own, behind.

One of his siblings noticed before we’d gotten half a block down the road.  “Oh!” cried Joseph in alarm and dismay, “Teddy’s not here!”

Larry abruptly came to a stop on the shoulder.  In our rear-view mirror, we could see a familiar form walking down the side of the road, coming our way.  He came alongside the pickup, opened the door and climbed in.

“Hi, Teddy!” Victoria greeted him happily.

“Hi, Victoria!” replied Teddy, grinning.

“Weren’t you getting kind of worried,” I asked him, feeling badly that we’d done such a thing to him, “when you saw us driving off?”

“Naa,” said Teddy, “I knew you’d be back!”

On we went, resolving to count noses with a little more care in the future.

We got on the Interstate just south of Grand Island.  There are always many big trucks traveling on it, even at night.  One went around us, not going much faster than we were.  Caleb, who was sitting too low to see the passing scenery, looked up at the semi.  His eyes widened.

“Why are we going backwards?!” he asked in amazement.

We drove all night.  I drove from Sterling to Denver, encountering pea-soup fog sometime after passing through Fort Morgan.  Since we arrived at 6:00 a.m., before Lincoln Auto was open, we left the slant trailer and Blazer in an out-of-business gas station nearby, hitched the pop-up camper with the little trailer carrying the four-wheeler onto the pickup, and headed up into the mountains. We rented a campsite at Chief Hosa Campground, where we promptly made good use of their shower rooms and picnic tables.  Larry unhitched, set up the pop-up camper, and, when breakfast was over, he and Teddy went back to Denver to relocate the slant trailer and Blazer onto Lincoln Auto’s property.  Lincoln Auto is in the suburb of Englewood, and the neighbor­hood is the sort where you would not want to leave your pet rhinoceros, lest some un­savory creature relieve him of his horns.  The man who works there and is a good friend of ours, Bob Virlee, loaned us another four-wheeler, which Larry loaded onto the back of his pickup.

In the meantime, the rest of us explored the campground.  I, as usual, had cam­era in hand.  We watched a little black mountain squirrel rooting through a careless camper’s bag of groceries.  He dug out a large muffin and skedaddled up a tree with it, ears perked forward, looking terribly pleased with himself.

When Larry and Teddy returned, they hitched everything back together, and we set out for the Eisenhower Tunnel.  We had intended to go over Loveland Pass, but the road was closed.  We accused Joseph of erecting the ‘Road Closed’ signs, since he’d wanted to go through the tunnel in the first place.  As we traveled south toward Lead­ville, the children were counting the waterfalls they saw spilling down the sides of the mountains.  “Oh, look at that one!” and “There’s one, way up there!” and “Look at that great big one!”  Caleb, staring out the wrong window, asked, “Where?  Where’s the great big--oh, there’s the Wal-Mart truck!” and then he looked around in surprise to see why in the world everybody was laughing so.

After a short stop in Dillon to let the right front brake finish smoking, we contin­ued on to Buena Vista, where the view wasn’t so beautiful after all (“Buena Vista” means “Beautiful View”) on account of all the rain and the clouds over the peaks.  We checked into the Collegiate Inn, since the boys’ tent is not entirely waterproof.  When the rain let up a little, we set up the camper, and the four older children stayed in it.

The Collegiate is so named because many of the surrounding peaks have the monikers of famous colleges…Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Elbert, and so on.

We decided to splurge on pizza, having seen a Pizza Hut just a block down the street.  I called and placed the order.  “We’ll have that right out to you in forty-five min­utes!” said the clerk blithely.  Forty-five minutes!  A person could starve, right there un­der their noses, and nobody would be the more concerned.

Forty-five minutes came and went.  Larry called again.

“They’re just going out the door, right now!” claimed the clerk cheerfully.

Half an hour later, Larry called again.  “Oh, we couldn’t find the Inn,” explained the clerk.  “The only ‘Collegiate’ anything we have here, is the ‘Collegiate Bank’.”

“But we’re right down the street!” Larry protested.  “I’ll just come and get it,” he told the man.

Larry, Teddy, and Joseph, stomachs a-rumble, rushed off to get the pizza.

Forty-five minutes later, they came back in the door, sans pizza, but carrying sev­eral grocery bags full of dry soup, a few chef salads, yogurt, and a box of potato salad.  Luckily, there was a small coffee maker in the room, so we could heat water for the soup.

“What happened to the pizza?” several littles inquired at once.

Larry told us that the Pizza Hut down the street was out of business, and the Pizza Hut we’d ordered from-------was in Salida, some thirty miles to the south.  Good grief. I wonder:  who got to eat our pizza?

Wednesday, we drove over Cottonwood Pass on the way to Tincup.  It was very pretty, in spite of the rain and mist.  Sometimes the sun shone through the clouds, and the raindrops on all the trees and alpine grasses glistened and glimmered.  The moun­tains were greener and more dazzling than I’d ever before seen them in August, and the valleys were completely covered with flowers of every dye and hue.

At the top of the pass, the road turned to gravel.  Clay, that is.  There were no railings, and the drop-offs were incredibly deep.  {So were the potholes.}  But our pickup was sure-footed and confident, and we never slipped once.

Finally arriving in Tincup, we stopped at the town’s only store, a combination general store/gas station/souvenir shop, and bought…what else?  A tin cup.  It cost five dollars.  (!)  But I had to have one.  Actually, I think it was the sticker on the side with Tincup, Colorado’s, logo that cost five dollars.  All of the houses in the little town were graced with small outhouses behind them, and there was only one community shower--and there was a four dollar price tag on each sluice.

“Of course, they wouldn’t get too sweaty up here,” remarked Teddy, crossing his arms and shivering in the cool mountain breeze.

We decided not to stay in Tincup.

Instead, we rented a little log cabin, complete with two rooms, a nice kitchen, and a bathroom--with a shower--at Holt’s Guest Ranch, about eight miles west of Tin­cup, beside the Taylor Reservoir.  Hooray for the shower!  I don’t mind ‘roughing it’, but I want to be clean whilst I’m at it.  Victoria was enthralled with the step leading up into the bathroom, and spent a good deal of time stepping up, stepping down, stepping up, and then back down again.

Lydia giggled.  “What are you doing, Victoria?”

Victoria looked up, slightly embarrassed when she discovered quite a number of people looking at her.  She turned sideways, tipped her head, and looked over her shoulder at her sister.  “I’m just uppin’ and downin’,” she said softly.

The little kitchen was filled with all the utensils one might need, including plates, pans, potholders, baking pans, and silverware.  In the corner sat a very small silver garbage can with a lid, exactly like the big metal ones that were so common outside people’s houses not so very long ago.  Caleb was delighted with it.

“Oh, look!” he exclaimed happily, “It’s a miniature garbage can, and it even smells like the big ones!”

After moving our things into the cabin, I immediately made use of our griddle by fixing grilled cheese sandwiches.  Mmmm!  I don’t know if that fragrant mountain air made those sandwiches taste better than usual, or not; but, in any case, they were scrumptious.  We warmed up some Del Monte green beans (no other canned beans can equal them) and a jar of applesauce, and had a real feast.

While I was cooking, Victoria pretended to cook, too.  “I’m making burrbaby candy for my dolly,” she explained, stirring vigorously in a little metal bowl with a small spatula.

“It’s ‘blueberry’,” I told her.

“Oh!” she said, “booberry,” said she.  She frowned, shook her head, and tried again.  “BLOOOberry!” she finished triumphantly.

Caleb’s feet were hurting.  Hannah inquired, “Are your shoes too tight?” and Caleb responded, “No, my toes just go right to the brim.”’

Victoria’s shoes were too tight for her, too (“They’re almost okay,” she ex­plained); so, as soon as we finished our lunch, we piled into the pickup and went to Gunnison, where we got both Caleb and Victoria new shoes.  Joseph bought himself a cap with “Frisco” imprinted on the crown, and Teddy bought a jacket, since he’d inad­vertently left his home, in spite of being reminded twice.

Victoria was sleeping by the time we got there, so I made a stab at the right size of shoes for her…and speculated right.  When she awoke, Teddy pulled the shoes from the box.  They were white tennis shoes, with curls of fuschia and purple along the sides.

“Look, Victoria!” he told her.  “We got you some new shoes!”

Her eyes grew wide.  “Oh, they’re so pretty!” she cried, picking one up and try­ing to insert her foot into it, but having no success, since the tongue was turned com­pletely into the interior of the shoe.

Teddy took it from her, straightened the tongue, and tried it again.  The small foot slipped right in.  It was just right.

She beamed.  “Oh, they do!  They are!” she exclaimed.

While some of us were shopping, Larry and a few of the other children went to wash the pickup.  Not only was it covered with the reddish clay we’d driven through, but the inner cooler was nearly clogged with bugs collected during our all-night drive from Nebraska.  Because of that, the pickup was running hotter it should’ve.  Also, a heat shield had slipped from its proper place near the turbo, and the heat from the turbo had partially melted a thingamajigger attached to the dealywhizzer next to the doohickey gadgetmabob.  I realize these are technical terms not suitable for the com­mon layperson, but I am of such great intelligence and comprehension regarding sub­ject matter of this sort, I have difficulty reducing to simpler jargon.

Larry spent some time at the side of a steep mountain road (where, fortunately, there happened to be a turnout long enough for us to park, although it was on the left side of the road, rather than the right) fixing and repairing; and I, in between hiking down to a big lake with the children and taking pictures of hummingbirds and scenery--and the children, of course--spent some time racing madly down the road after pieces of Larry’s socket set.  [That last sentence did Charles Dickens proud, don’t you think?]

We even found a hummingbird’s nest.  You can’t imagine how teeny tiny it was!  Why, a penny couldn’t lie down comfortably inside it.  There were many broad-tailed hummingbirds, and, for the first time in my life, I saw several rufous hummingbirds.  They were a bright rust color, but when they flew into the sunlight, they looked to be a brilliant rose color.

On our way back to our cabin, we stopped to fish at Taylor Reservoir.  I used several rolls of film on a spectacular sunset.  We saw three white-tailed bucks, all with good-sized antlers.  After the sun went down, it got colder…and colder…and colder…and all we had were jackets or sweaters; no coats.  We soon took the worms home to keep them warm enough that they wouldn’t mind being put to use again the next day.

Our cabin did not have a bathtub.  Caleb described how he was doubtless capa­ble of showering alone:  “…because I’ve been in a shower all by myself before…when it wasn’t on.”

We couldn’t keep the cabin the following night, because it had been reserved for someone else.  But it wasn’t raining quite so much, so we pulled our pop-up camper to the other side of the ranch, where there were camping stalls, complete with hookups, for campers of all sizes.  Teddy set up the boys’ tent just behind our camper, and we only had to pay for one spot.  Clouds were once again billowing up over the mountains surrounding us, so Larry and Teddy fastened a tarp over the tent and the rear of the pop-up camper, effectively producing a rain shed, of sorts.  We didn’t look a bit out of place; campers all over the mountains were covering themselves with tarps of all col­ors until the campgrounds looked like Tarp City.

The early mornings were occupied pursuing trails on the four-wheelers (not me; I stayed afoot, taking pictures).  Larry had invested in no less than ten orange rain pon­chos, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest to be seen in one.  The boys, on the other hand, wouldn’t be caught dead in one; they preferred to drown first.  Fortunately, the rain was generally light, and nobody got drenched.  The littles, peering out the camper’s window, were quite struck with the comical picture their father made in his orange slicker, hood up, tearing along on the four-wheeler.

I’d planned to bake stuffed potatoes in the little gas oven in the cabin; but, since we were banished to the pop-up camper, which had no oven, I decided to boil the po­tatoes, instead.  And you know what?  They turned out just perfect!--absolutely deli­cious.  I put butter, salt, pepper, sour cream, cheese, crumbled bacon, and chunky gar­den vegetable salsa in the potatoes.  Mmmmmm!   Yummy.

That afternoon, we drove to Crested Butte, and then Mt. Crested Butte, a smaller settlement to the north, which I thought was an old mining town, now a ghost town museum of sorts.

I was wrong.

Ten miles south of the town, we started noticing the hundred-thousand- and mil­lion-dollar mansions on the hill.  We scratched our heads and wondered why rich people would want to live way out there in the boonies.

And then we came up over a hill and saw the town:  street after street of beau­tiful homes, roofs glittering in the sun.  Five miles up the mountain was Mt. Crested Butte, a community of condominiums and hotels.  An airport sported numerous private jets, and at the bus depot were enormous luxury buses.

It was not a ghost town.  It was a high-classed ski and tourist resort.

We skirted the edge of town and drove up into a high valley toward the peaks to the north.  The sun shone warmly on horses grazing in the flower-filled basin.  It really was beautiful.

But when we were nearly sideswiped by several fast bicyclers who gave us dirty looks for piddling along in front of them, snapping pictures, oohing and ahhing, we de­cided we’d had enough of those villages, and we retraced our route toward Tincup.  In Crested Butte, Larry let Teddy and I out on the old-fashioned main street to look for a souvenir patch to sew on the jacket Teddy had bought at the Wal-Mart in Gunnison.  While we trotted down the street, trying to stay under the awnings, it began raining again.  Larry drove round and round the block while Teddy and I hunted down an elu­sive insignia decoration, and we waved at him in a friendly fashion each time he went by, thereby keeping him in a good humour in spite of the traffic jams and the downpour.  But eventually we found what we wanted and paid for it, and the next time that big pickup went by, we sprang out from under the canopy and leaped into the pickup.

“Hi!” Victoria greeted me.  “You all wet?”

The sun came back out, so we stopped to fish in the Taylor River near Almonta, then proceeded on to the Reservoir.  The children were intrigued with the cows and calves we encountered on the roads, and Caleb asked many questions about the cattle guards we crossed.  Turning east, we followed a mountain goat path (no cow path, that; much more primitive) over hill and dale, far up into the mountains.  We finally learned from some backcountry campers miles and miles in the outback that the only way out was back the way we’d come.  Anyway, it was a merry, adventuresome lark, although it would’ve been prettier, had not fog and clouds been covering most of the nearby mountain peaks.

Home again at our camper, we had a midnight snack of macaroni and cheese.  Teddy and Joseph went out to their tent--and soon came rushing back in, telling us to come out quick and listen to the coyotes.

We came out quick.

But they weren’t coyotes.

They were wolves.

Goodness, you never heard such wild, goosebump-raising howling!  These beasts didn’t yip like coyotes at all; rather, they barked a couple of times, then emitted long, lonely, spine-tingling howls that quavered all the way up the scale.  Caleb reached for my hand.  “That kind of scares me,” he whispered softly.

I took his warm little hand in my cold one.  “Well, it’s nothing to worry about,” I told him; “wolves don’t like to eat kids named ‘Caleb’, especially when they’re wearing fuzzy gray jackets; the fuzz gets between their teeth and makes them sick.”

“Hee hee hee,” giggled Caleb, relaxing his grip.

Funny how children realize that, if a parent teases about a certain circumstance, it must not be something to get too frightened about.  “The truth is,” I told him, “wolves are just like other wild animals:  they’re most often afraid of humans, and will run from them.  Anyway, those that we hear are probably a mile away, and we are quite safe in our camper and tent.”

“And besides,” added Larry, “if one gets too close, Mama will bite his nose off!”

“Hee hee hee!” laughed Caleb, no longer afraid.

We soon heard another sound:  it was the music of people singing.  Further­more, they were singing old hymns, the sort we know and love!  There was four-part harmony, with a man singing a lively bass, and one lady’s voice doing soprano, and an­other a high, clear tenor.  We ventured down the dark gravel road toward the little log cabins.  The song came to an end just as we rounded a cabin and found a family of six on the covered porch of their cabin.  A lady was shining a flashlight onto what looked like a hymnbook, and a man was turning the pages.

“Are you the people who are singing?” I asked quietly, hoping not to startle them.

They turned and looked at us.  “Well, we’re trying!” laughed the man.

“It’s beautiful!” I told them.  “And it’s our kind of music, too.  We especially ap­preciate it, because at a campground near Denver we were serenaded by the most awful music ever!”

They thanked us, and we returned to our camper, hearing them start another familiar old song, “Into the Love of Jesus, Deeper and Deeper I Go”.

They must’ve felt, as we did, that we were kindred souls, for the next day before they left, they walked to the playground where the children were playing to tell them goodbye.  Dorcas saw them coming and greeted them, “Hi!  Are you coming to play on the toys?” which made them laugh, for they were all adults.

Friday we left that campground and, after one last interlude of fishing in the Taylor River, we headed south to Gunnison, where we restocked our food supply, then on to Poncha Springs.  The sun came out from behind some clouds.

“Oh, look!” exclaimed Hannah.  “There it is!  I knew there was going to be a rainbow!”

We looked swiftly toward the south, and there, arched perfectly over the peaks of the San Juan Mountains, was the brightest rainbow we had ever seen.  It seemed to be illuminated from behind, it shone so brilliantly.  The colors were vivid and distinct, and the purple, especially, seemed to glow with radiance.  I, as I often do, again told the children the significance of the rainbow, as God’s promise to man that He would never again destroy the earth by a flood.  It is called a ‘remembrance’--not only for man, but also to God.  And it’s a good thing, too; for man’s wickedness is so great, you’d think God would destroy things in a moment!  But we have a long-suffering Lord.

At the top of Monarch Pass, we stopped in the gift shop.  I bought a screen saver for my computer that has forty-four scenic photographs from Colorado.  It was made by a Christian family, and is entitled, The Wonder of Creation.  I also got a mouse pad with a picture of columbines in a beautiful valley, with snow-covered mountain peaks in the background, and fluffy white clouds in a blue sky.

Teddy got a couple of pewter belt buckles, and Larry and Joseph got themselves each a belt buckle, too.  Hannah got a crystal pencil holder with a ceramic hummingbird inside.  It is filled with water, and when it is shaken, metallic glitter swirls around the little bird.  Hester bought a little pendant made of pink quartz, with a tiny wolf etched into it.  I bought Hester, Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria small porcelain cups with a colorful mountain scene and the word “Colorado” painted on the sides.  Dorcas bought a couple of souvenir spoons to join her collection.  One little pewter spoon has a rifle for the handle, and the silver spoon has a shovel for the bowl.  Caleb got a magnet with a pic­ture of a fawn on it.

Turning north, we drove toward Fairplay, and on to Denver.  As we journeyed through stunning mountain landscapes, I pointed at a group of firs on the side of a hill.  “Why are all those trees dead?” I inquired.

“Because they died,” Larry informed me knowledgeably, making those brat kids of mine all laugh.

We got to Littleton at 9:00 p.m., where lived the man for whom we were to haul three vintage cars.  Our friend, Bob Virlee, was waiting there to help us, and he’d brought our big slant trailer with our Blazer on it.  Larry unhitched the pop-up camper and the little trailer with our four-wheeler, and then Bob backed his pickup against the back of ours, and Larry drove the borrowed four-wheeler off of our pickup and onto Bob’s.  He then backed the Blazer off the slant trailer and hitched the pop-up camper onto it.  Next, he backed up to the slant trailer and hitched onto it.

That was the easy part.

Now it was time to load the three old cars…and that wasn’t an easy job, because none of them could run on their own steam.  So Larry used the winch mounted on the back of his pickup to pull them up onto the trailer.  Now, when he uses the winch, he must keep his pickup running, because otherwise it drains the battery, and the winch can’t pull the vehicles.  So those of us who were sitting in the pickup were subjected to the malodorous aroma of diesel fumes.  Ugh!

When the cars were finally loaded, Larry put our four-wheeler sideways on the back of the slant trailer, behind the third car.  Bob Virlee took the little four-wheeler trailer back to Lincoln Auto, to store it for us until the next time Larry goes that way.

The man then paid us, and, at a quarter after two, we were ready to go.  Larry drove the big pickup and the loaded slant trailer, while I drove the Blazer with the pop-up camper.  Driving along behind him, gazing at that load, it seemed exactly like a gi­ant-sized Volkswagen bug traveling in reverse down the Interstate.  The four-wheeler’s wheels were the ‘eyes’, or headlights, the roof of the third Chevy was precisely the right shape for a VW beetle, and the extended wheels and fenders of the slant trailer itself looked like the fender flares and wheels of a Bug.  I tell you, it looked funny.

We’d intended to drive most of the way home Friday night, but it took a lot longer to load than we’d expected.  By the time we got to Fort Morgan, our eyelids were drooping disturbingly.  We stopped at a motel.  No vacancy.  We went to the next one, a couple of blocks further on.  No vacancy.  It was the same story at the every one on that strip.  The man in the office told us to try the old road, a couple of miles south of the town.  We headed south.

After checking three motels, we finally found a couple of rooms at an old, de­crepit motel.  It was 5:00 a.m.

An empty pack of beer bottles sat beside the porch.  I was disgusted.  What if they thought we’d left it there?  But that wasn’t the worst thing.

I opened the room’s little refrigerator to put our milk into it--and there inside were two full bottles of beer!  Aarrgghh.

We intended to get up in a couple of hours, because I needed to be home for Saturday night practice with our special singing groups for the Sunday services, and the trip home was a good ten-hour drive.

I was awakened by the incessant barking of a dog…at 11:00 a.m.  The children were still sound asleep.  “Oh, look at the time!” I hissed in Larry’s ear.  “I’ll never make it in time for practice!”

I called home to tell Linda Wright, our music director, my dilemma.  “Just prac­tice the song for the morning,” I told her, “and pick one I know.  Tell me what key it’s in, and any details I need to know, and I think I’ll be okay.  We can practice the evening song after church tomorrow morning.”

We ate breakfast at the city park in Fort Morgan.  There is a lake there, and Can­ada geese, mallard ducks, and swans abound.  Some of them are tame enough that they will eat right out of your hand.  We fed them some old bread and a few handfuls of Cheerios.  I used to go to that same park with my parents when I was young, and Mama always saved old bread crumbs for me to feed them.  While we were eating, some girls came along with a little black dog which they proceeded to set upon the ducks and geese, who fled into the water as fast as they could go, honking and quacking in alarm.

Kids sure can be mean, can’t they?  Victoria was appalled.  “They’re really aw­ful?” she said, staring across the water in dislike.

The little Blazer found it almost too much to pull the heavily laden pop-up camper on that hot day.  But we stopped periodically to let it cool off, so it made it to Arapahoe okay.

At a station where we often stop in eastern Colorado, the driveway is steep, and there are deep ditches on either side.  Larry, in front of me, was pulling out.  With that big pickup and the forty-eight-foot slant trailer, one must make wide turns in order to go safely around corners.  Well, three things conspired to cause a sure predicament:  1) A vehicle was just pulling in, so Larry didn’t swing out as wide as usual.  2) Caleb, in the front seat, was leaning forward, and Larry couldn’t see very well in his rear-view mirror.  3) The rear of the trailer drags on steep places.

All of a sudden, the trailer was hung up, the right tandems were clear off the ground, and every time Larry stepped on the accelerator, the trailer tilted alarmingly toward the ditch, while the first car, high off the ground, rocked sickeningly and made the trailer lean all the more.  When Larry slipped the clutch and tried to accelerate, smoke billowed out underneath the pickup from the clutch suddenly getting too hot.  The trailer tilted farther.  My heart stopped.

I snatched up my CB and cried, “You’re tipping!  You’re tipping!  You’re tipping!”

Larry stopped.  He climbed out and sauntered calmly back to survey the situa­tion.  Then, walking around his pickup, he locked the hubs in.  Getting back into it, he put it into four-low and stepped on the accelerator--hard.  The pickup went.  And the trailer followed.  For one hair-raising, terrifying instant, I was certain the entire load--with cars worth well over $40,000 apiece--was going to land upside down in the bottom of that gully; but Larry didn’t slow down, and I think the main reason the trailer didn’t upend itself was because it just plain didn’t have time to, before it landed once again on solid ground.

Victoria, in the meantime, had been sitting in her car seat just behind me, not uttering a peep.  I didn’t realize how much all this drama had affected her until, a few miles further on, Larry, while opening his pop, accidentally drove onto the shoulder a bit.  He was directly in Victoria’s line of vision.  Now, I certainly didn’t know that two-year-olds understood about staying between the white lines, and that sort of a thing; but suddenly Victoria gasped and cried, “He’s tipping!  He’s tipping!”

Then he pulled smoothly back into his proper lane, and Victoria sighed in relief.  “He’s not tipping now,” she said.

I picked up my mike to tell Larry what a funny thing his little daughter had just said, and possibly to warn him to stay in his own lane.  “Victoria said you’re tipping!”  I remarked in what I thought was a reasonably composed voice.

With that, the big rig in front of me immediately swerved madly onto the shoul­der and began slowing down.  “Oh, brother,” I sighed to myself, “now what?” and then I thought, “what did he think I said?” just as Larry’s voice came over the CB asking, “Did you say the four-wheeler was tipping?”

“No, no!” I answered quickly, “I said Victoria said you were tipping--because you ran off onto the shoulder!”

“Oh,” responded the voice, and the rig swerved back onto the Interstate and continued on.

While the children and I ate supper at Johnson Reservoir just south of Lexington, Larry went on south thirty miles to Arapahoe, where he was to leave the three cars we’d hauled.  When we finished eating, we packed up and went to meet him, Dorcas carrying Larry’s supper on her lap.  We got to Arapahoe just as Larry finished unloading.  In the brightly-lit parking lot of a closed gas station, he drove the Blazer and camper up onto the slant trailer and chained everything down, while the littles conducted scientific experiments with all the bugs and toads that swarmed about the place, screeching when they accidentally touched one.  Teddy caught a giant katydid and showed it to Victoria.

“Eeeewwww!” she shrieked, shivering from head to foot, feet flying up and down in place.  Teddy laughed till he cried, and I threatened to put a big black beetle down his collar if he heckled his younger siblings by holding a bug too close for comfort.

“I shouldn’t bug them, you mean?” he asked innocently, and I pretended to snatch up a bug and run at him.  He fled, laughing.

We headed for home.

By the time we reached Kearney, Larry was conducting scientific experiments on how long he could keep his eyes shut and still remain on the road, so I decided it was my turn to drive.  I drove to Grand Island, and then Larry drove the rest of the way home.

What a long, long sixty miles that last leg of the drive seems to be!--especially when one is too tired to see straight.  And, upon arriving, at 3:00 a.m., everybody needed showers, and Hester and Lydia needed their hair curled.  I staggered off to bed at 5:00 a.m.  The alarm rang at 7:30.  We clambered out of bed and got ready for church…and we actually got there on time, looking amazingly organized and properly prepared, in spite of the fact that we didn’t feel that way, at all.  Furthermore, we actu­ally managed to stay awake through Sunday School and church!

Thankfully, everything turned out fine, even the unpracticed special number, al­though I felt extremely rusty after a week of no practice.  I practiced my solo, He Giveth More Grace, after church, singing through it only once, since when I am tired my voice gets hoarse quickly, and I didn’t want to strain it.  So, hoping that He really would give more grace, I sang that evening--and made it through the song with nary a quim­ble or quabble.  Whew!!

This was one Sunday that we didn’t go for a Sunday afternoon drive, nosiree.  We were mighty glad to tumble straight into bed for a three-hour nap, that we were.

Keith and Esther seemed to have taken care of Aleutia nicely, although she was terribly glad we were home again, growling joyfully as each of us entered the front door.  Keith and Esther themselves must have missed us, too; for they came to eat Larry’s specialty--pancakes--after church, and they came again Sunday night after church.  That’s okay; we kind of missed them.

Another thing we miss is the nice mountain weather.  It’s 95 degrees in the shade around these parts!

Larry's aunt wrote to tell us she had gotten a new computer, asking a few questions about this and that.  I wrote to her:  Congratulations on your acquisition of a computer!  But do be careful; they bite, you know!  Why, one computer, all by itself, can be as recalcitrant as a whole convoy of llamas.  Just save your letters periodically as you type, and then you should be able to edit them without fear or foible.  Then, if it locks up, you can always pull the saved document right back up again.  Simple, Simon!  But do remember:  it does no good whatsoever to embed the mouse into the monitor screen in a fitful flurry of frustration.

Now, I’d better print out this letter and finish putting our jetsam and flotsam away.