Westcliff to Pueblo

We woke up in a beautiful campsite, looking forward to a short ride and then a much needed day off. A day off needed not so much for resting our legs as for catching up on e-mail and blog updates, laundry, sleep, and most importantly...TV! The boys LOVE it. Solomon loves cartoons and Yonah is newly intrigued by Court TV. Not having a TV in our house has made the whole thing a fascinating novelty.
Wait....Solomon just showed up and wants to write something. The computer is in the reception area of this sort of skanky motel. It was the best we could do in the sort of skanky town of Pueblo (hopefully no one from Pueblo is reading this).
Even though the town is skanky and there were no vacancies in the one nice hotel in town when we arrived, we stumbled upon this place and it has been perfect. It has everything we needed...laundry, a computer available all night, early breakfast, and an outdoor pool. Not to mention all the fun drama that you only get to witness in the skankier places. I'll tell you about it when I get to that part...but first....we left Westcliff and took an alternative route that this couple from Pueblo told us about. It didn't save us any time or milage but it was almost completely devoid of cars. It was so beautiful. There were lots of deer and signs explaining that this was a Covenant Controlled Community and there was NO HUNTING. We were wondering why everyone was so friendly and waving to us. At first Yonah said "maybe they think we are locals since not many people know about this road"...but then we saw the signs. It was a little like the Stepford Wives but it was nice to ride on. We were only on it for about 15 miles and then we hit Hwy 96 again and took that down into Pueblo. It was a quick descent and you could really feel the temperature change and the humidity increase. 2,000 ft. drop and we could really tell we were out of the Rockies. This next leg of our journey will be so different. We have already started experiencing the afternoon thundershowers. We have everything wrapped in huge plastic bags in case we can't get out of the rain. It doesn't usually last long so we are planning on just stopping and waiting it out and then continue on or start early in the morning, break in the afternoon and then cont. in the evening.
Anyhow, we rode around last night looking for a hotel that had a vacancy and stumbled on to this place. We went out for dinner (nothing worth talking about...nothing like The Slanted Door...which SOME people can't seem to STOP telling me about...if I hear about that mung bean/ginger soup dessert, or that Yellow fin tuna one more time......)and got the boys showered and into bed and then I went to the "open all night" reception area to get on the computer. I was there from about 11pm to 1:30am so I got to see a lot of interesting Pueblo Night life. It would take me too long to describe it all but a few of my favorites were the three teenage girls that came in about midnight and rented a room, the young, dissheveled guy who came in with his laptop and was working on a table next to me until some older guy came in and started berating him for not paying his bills (this was around 11:30pm on Sat. night), and then there was my all time favorite..the guy who came in around 12:30am and stretched out on the sofa, and explained to the young girl working behind the desk, and me, that he was kicked out of his room so that his roommate could have sex with some "chick" he picked up in a bar. He didn't seem nearly as put out as I would have been in his situation. After about an hour he started to get antsy and wanted to go back to his room but didn't want to barge in on them, and all his incesant chatter was distracting me, so I suggested that he just go check and see if maybe the woman wanted a 2 for 1...I also may have mentioned that his friend was probably passed out by now anyway. So he went back to his room but came back after a few min. saying that he had barged in on them and was kicked out again. Then in the morning we see these two police cars and three officers heading to another part of the building, near our room. Turns out those girls were under age and one of their dads called the cops so he could extract her..but in the end...his daughter wasn't one of the girls in the room...which is what the girls said in the first place.
I'll finish later because some drunk guy just walked in and wants to use the computer...I'm not even making this up, I swear!