It was warm and humid overnight in Nebraska, we slept will all the windows open and the fans running all night long which kept us comfortable. We got an early start to the driving, leaving our "urban camping" spot at 7am sharp and headed out of Lincoln towards Denver, CO
Nebraska is flat
For a while there wasn't much to see out the window as Nebraska is very flat and the landscape doesn't change much as the miles go by. When we got closer to the western edge of the state the plains were broken up by smaller rolling hills and more trees.
As we did yesterday we stopped for a quick lunch at a truck stop parking lot, and again just as yesterday we were very efficient and were on the road again in under 30 minutes.
We stopped again for fuel when we got closer to Denver. As we got into Denver, my navigation unit started to give me some strange directions, but we have learned to trust it as it's usually routing us around some road closure or some area that's not safe for large trailers (we have an RV specific GPS). This time though, I had entered an incorrect destination. In fact I somehow entered a point on a dirt road about 16 miles from where we wanted to be going. The good news is that in order to get to that point, we ended up driving through mountains just west of Denver that were absolutely stunning. Kelly and I even joked about telling everyone that we made the detour on purpose for the views.
Our next surprise was that the campsite I had booked was also in these same stunning mountains. I hadn't looked into the details of the campground we selected for this nights stay well enough. We have had very good experiences for these overnight stays at KOA campgrounds, so when we were planning this trip, I just looked for a KOA near Denver and booked it.
The Central City KOA just west of Denver is at 8800 feet at the top of a mountain and has gorgeous views from all directions. We got to our campsite and were in awe with the view. I couldn't have been more surprised or happy with staying here both tonight and on the way back.
Some storms passed nearby shortly after we got settled in here, and after the rain passed I was able to get this photo of a double rainbow over our campsite
We ended up meeting some great people, one couple was on their way through from Wisconsin heading towards Yellowstone, The family in the site just behind ours was from Memphis and had their two young grandchildren along with them, so Emmett and Sammie got to play with them for a while. They even joined us as we ended the night with some s'more's around the campfire.
We are heading out in the morning to Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, CO