Colorado Bound!

Driving 625 miles in one day is certainly a feat. In order to make it to the Rockies game in the evening, our group loaded the van at 6:15, ate some breakfast, and hit the road by 6:40 am! Yay for early mornings and sleep deprivation. Perhaps because of our overall lack of sleep, the group was quite slap-happy all morning. Personally, I was ecstatic to be ending our drive in my native Colorado at Coors Field, which I refer to as the most wonderful place on Earth. My enthusiasm combined with the over caffeination of my classmates made for lots of puns and laughter on the way out of Kansas City, Missouri.

As the class settled down, our class DJ played some tunes. Most of the day was spent uneventfully as part of the class slept in an attempt to catch up on the sleep we had missed, and everyone else read to stay on track with the more tradition part of this class. We had a quick dance break when One Direction's "Let Me Kiss You" played, courtesy of Hailley's playlist.

We stopped for gas partway into Kansas at a station with more trucks than I've ever seen parked before. It was nice to get out and walk around before settling back in for three more hours of driving. Then came lunch on the western end of Kansas at Montana Mike's Steakhouse. We had a wonderful waitress, who quickly found the class trouble maker after the first time Brendan opened his mouth. All her teasing, the delicious food, and the homemade cupcakes we were giving made lunch fly by, and it was time to hit the road again.

Shortly after lunch, we crossed into Mountain Time Zone, which gave us an extra hour to reach the game on time. Not long after that, we crossed the state line into Colorado. Though the landscape looked about the same, words cannot describe how excited I was to be back in my homeland. There is an overwhelming sense of state pride that runs through the culture of the Centennial State, and I was overjoyed to share my place with the rest of my classmates. About fifty miles in, we encountered another oddity of the state. Within the Colorado border, I-70 is 450 miles long, and there is a rumor floating around social media that the 420 mile marker sign had to be replaced with a 419.99 sign in order to stop it from being stolen. We did indeed see the new 419.99 sign, confirming the rumor.

As we looked into the distance, our hopes to see mountains were overshadowed by the ominous greenish-black clouds ahead of us. We drove into the heart of a thunder storm, which soon chased us off the road. We waited about ten minutes for the heavy hail to subside. After the initial blast, we had relatively clear skies for the rest of the drive in, which enabled us to see the silhouettes of the cloud covered mountains in the distance. The edges of the highway in Denver were coated with plowed hail that we originally mistook for snow. We maneuvered successfully through Denver to find parking just three blocks from Coors Field, and I quickly forgot our almost twelve hour drive as I marched toward the ballpark where I knew an exciting Colorado Rockies game awaited!