Deja Vu--Al's Chickenette

Still basking in the joy of our slot canyon hiking of the past 2 days (top photo above), we started the day by doing a driving tour of Colorado National Monument which is just outside of Grand Junction, CO. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and my friends Marty and Craig were duly impressed with the knockout rock formations in the monument. As Marty said, it is very difficult to photograph and capture the sense of power you feel while driving thru it. After an hour of taking it all in, we pointed the truck towards Denver.

I-70 in western Colorado is one of our more scenic interstates. As we passed by Vail we had to record the aspens taking on their full fall glory (middle photo above). Because we got such an early start today, my friend Craig was able to change his flight from tomorrow to this afternoon, so we powered on to the Denver airport and dropped him off. Marty and I then hit the road again heading east.

The shift in geography from the slickrock of SE Utah to the rockies of western and central Colorado to the plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas over the past 36 hours is about as dramatic as any you can make in the US. The sun setting on huge fields of red milo sorghum was eyepopping, but again very difficult to capture digitally.

Now it's Saturday nite and we are in Hays, KS on our way to Columbia, MO where I grew up, and where my friend Marty and his wife, Nola, and one of my brothers, Jon and his wife, Candy, live. For dinner we went to Al's Chickenette (bottom photo above) which for long time followers of this blog is a place that my sister and I ate at way back in late March. It is famous in these parts for its fried chicken and fresh cut fries. We arrived hungry at 8 PM and left quite satisfied.

11 more new birds were seen for the week. On Monday I will be going into St. Louis, MO to find the eurasian tree sparrow which is an introduced species that lives in the greater St. Louis area. This bird would raise the YTD to 682. Stay tuned!