DENVER, CHEYENNE & LUSK

We left Utah and headed into Colorado on I-70.  Little did we know that the section of interstate we would be on is the highest point of all interstates!  11,158 feet is pretty high to drive up!  At the top is the Eisenhower tunnel that is 1.7 miles long.  We play the "hold your breath in a tunnel" game and no one made it through that tunnel.  :)
We slowly made our way over the pass and were awed by some of the beauty along the way.  Just outside of Denver we stopped at an RV campground.  And, praise God there were showers! And they only cost .25 cents for 5 minutes.  After showers and unpacking a bit my brother stopped by and we had dinner with him.  I had asked him to pick up ice cream for dessert and lucky us, he brought everyone their own individual Ben & Jerry's ice cream!  It was great to catch up with him and give him hugs.

The next morning we headed North to Cheyenne to see our friend Justin.  When we got there he was canning green beans from his garden so Erik pitched in to help and I pretty much just tested the fresh green beans.  They were perfect.  :)

We stayed with Justin for four days (and 4 nights in a real bed!).
The Cheyenne Frontier days were gong on so we went to a big pancake feed in the morning and then a rodeo in the afternoon on Friday.

On Saturday Erik and Justin spent a day setting the posts for a snow drift fence while the kids and I hung out watching the Olympics, reading and taking naps.  I also caught up on laundry this day... and there was a lot!  I don't think Justin realized just how much we had when he volunteered his washer and dryer.  Thanks Justin!

Sunday we went to church in Longmont and then to a Rockie's game in Denver.  It was about 90 degrees that day.  We walked about a mile to the ball park and then sat down in the sun to watch the game.  Actually, I didn't sit... my seat had been stuck in the down position and was so scalding hot that I couldn't sit on it!  Eventually, we scouted out some seats that were in the shade and about the time we moved seats the clouds rolled in and we all felt sooooo much better.

On Monday we got up early, said goodbye to Justin and headed towards South Dakota.  We noticed on the map that we would be driving through Lusk, Wyoming where Erik's grandparents were from.  We stopped by the cemetery in town and started looking row by row at all the headstones for Ethel and Lawrence Tucker.  After searching forever we finally found Erik's great grandparents names and a great aunt.  We also found his great grandpa's name on a war memorial.  As we were leaving the cemetery we noticed a large notebook right by the entrance.  In this book you could look up names of the people to find out where their grave was located.  That probably would have helped shorten our search a bit.