…for not posting to my very own blog lately. Because of that, you deserve a little update from Wyoming.

Since my last posting in early April, many things have happened. I graduated from Central Wyoming College with another degree. I lost my job running the college radio station because of that (bad timing, that…), which I have been doing for over three years. Sadly, my professor, boss, and good friend Dale Smith, after becoming blind due to complications from chemotherapy, spent the last few weeks of the semester in the hospital, getting out the day of graduation. He also had his job at the college changed from electronic media to humanities by the CWC powers that be. He’s doing better health wise, but I’m concerned for him as a friend, and will check with him regularly to see how he is doing.

The day after graduation, the wife and I and grandson loaded up a 5 by 8 Uhaul trailer for my daughter, and left for a cross country trip from central Wyoming, to Nashville, Tennessee, where she was moving. A nice leisurely trip there, got her unpacked and moved in, and then drove south to Birmingham, Alabama to visit family there that we hadn’t seen since our move to Wyoming in 2000. We spent 3 days there, had a wonderful visit, and still with the Uhaul in tow, headed west to Dallas, Texas…actually Plano, which is the northern boundary of the huge DFW metroplex. In Plano, we visited my mom and sister, and wife’s dad and step mom and brother. Stayed there for about 5 days, and then with the Uhaul loaded with tools from my late dad’s workshop, (which I spent 2 days cleaning out for mom) and a few pieces of furniture, we headed back north, home to Wyoming.

Then things got exciting. This was the day that the huge tornado hit in northeastern rural areas of Denver. We had spent the nite before in Raton, New Mexico, and had just hit Colorado City, and the rest area there for lunch, when I got a call from a good friend, whom we had just visited the day before in Ft. Worth, as we were leaving the DFW area. He was watching the news and weather, and got the news about the Denver twister forwarded to me by cell phone. In Colorado City, I couldn’t find any wifi for a net connection, so we headed north to Colorado Springs, the home of Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base. Got off the highway there, checked the McD to see if it had wifi…nope. Then, having spent several nites in various Super 8 hotels across the country the last two weeks, found one on the west side of the interstate…and yes, wifi.

I got on, hit weather.gov, and then the Denver area radar and Nexrad. Holy crap…the storm cell system I was seeing in real time was the WORST storm system I’d ever seen, as far as having to personally deal with it Real Soon Now, by having to get through it to get home. The super cell that hit Windsor, Colorado, was in an anti-cyclonic rotation, and was moving counter clockwise, and heading towards Laramie, Wyoming, which was our connection from 287 to Interstate 80, and places west. Warnings were posted in the Denver forecast page of the current storm, tornado, damage, direction, and so forth, and it just didn’t look good for us.

We heard on the radio about the storms and damage, and decided to take Highway 287 up through Fort Collins..getting of Interstate 25 asap. That took a while to get to, and just as we got through town, and about to get on the highway itself north of Fort Collins, the highway was shut down due to a bus and semi accident. We got detoured through the little town of Laporte to the east, and hit the highway AGAIN, north of the major accident.

All was going well for about 20 minutes. Then, we started seeing a lot of snow on the sides of the road…LOTS of snow. Next, we started seeing vehicles heading south from the summit on 287, with what looked like snow on their front bumpers and windshields. Weird. The skies to the north and east were astoundingly stormy and dark. Sunset was approaching quickly, and the storm clouds hastened the effect. Just then, I realized that what we were seeing on the sides of the road wasn’t snow…but HAIL….INCHES of it. Totally blew me away.

As we kept heading north on 287, it started raining lightly, and soon quite moderately. Within moments, the medium pouring rain was joined by small snow pellets that exploded quietly on the windshield of our car. As it got heavier and darker, the snow pellets turned to pea sized hail…and then to actual snow…and then to VERY heavy snow. The road conditions were deteriorating the closer we got to the summit, and the rain slick roads become ice slicked and then slushy fairly quickly. A group of cars, trucks, and a couple of semi’s (with us in the middle of the convoy) kept plugging along, at about 20 miles an hour, all of us with flashers blinking into what literally turned into a blizzard.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, we hit the crest, and started down the miles long hill that led down into the south side of Laramie. Strangely, it was dark…where it wasn’t supposed to be. Seems that the supercell from Denver/Windsor, dropped another tornado, which tore up some houses and a couple of farms, and took out a few hundred blocks of power. We stopped at the Flying J truckstop to gas up, cleaned the snow and ice off the front of the car and the trailer, and hit the road on I-80. The snow, sleet, and rain stopped about 20 miles west of town, and from there on home, it was very dark, and very cold. Throughout the last 200 miles of our trip, from Laramie to Riverton, the roadway was clear and safe, but the sides of the road held quite a bit of storm passage…meaning snow as far as the eye could see…all the way to Beaver Rim, and halfway down that 9 degree grade of that steep hill.

We arrived home around 3:30am, dragged ourselves in, and went to bed.

It took us a week to recover from that 3600 mile trip. Holy crap we were tired.

Since returning home on May 23, we’ve been busy working on getting ready to move into a new apartment in town, packing boxes, cleaning our storage unit out, and doing a lot of computer work.

And, oh yes, SUMMER college classes…Society and Self from U. Wyo, History and Statistics from CWC. 10 credit hours during the summer session.

THAT’s what we’ve been doing since April.

More to be added later…including some great news about the SurvivalRing website project.

Rich