I was going to leave from Las Vegas at 2 a.m. this morning, went to bed at 7:30 last night, had a nap, woke up, and couldn't get back to sleep, so I left at 12:30 a.m.

It was fine driving in the middle of the night, and the trip seemed to be going quickly until I ran into the 6 hour road closure on I-70 going into Denver. Fortunately, I was at the tail end of it, so it my delay was 1 - 1 1/2 hours. What closed the highway eastbound was a semi truck loaded with crushed cars rolled and caught fire. The driver and his dog weren't injured. Of course, I didn't know about the crushed cars, so when I finally drove past the wreck and saw all those crushed cars, I thought 'no wonder it closed the road for 6 hours - huge wreck.' We were lucky though, because once they opened the road for us, our backup disappeared fairly quickly.

Going the other direction, westbound, the traffic was backed up for 20 miles due to curiosity as people drove by, and three hours after I went through there, traffic was still backed up.

The reason I left so early was to avoid the rush hour from skiers leaving the mountains, and rush hour in Denver, which is brutal. And also I wanted to get to my house while it was still light out so I could decide if it was safe to drive closer to my house. I didn't make it to the front door, but my truck is parked on the bridge right now - closer than it has been in more than 90 days. In theory, I can drive across my front lawn, avoiding the messed up driveway, but it's all covered with 4 inches of snow right now, and I want to see what I'm driving over.



Tomorrow I'll get out there and take some pictures. I've been gone a month.

P.S. Eloise the cat was a good traveler. She only cried (loudly) and panted for the first hour, and then was quiet the rest of the journey. My truck has a very wide center console with a thick folded towel on it, and she stayed there all day, leaning against me most of the time. Right now, she's staked out in the kitchen because there might be a mouse.