Day 41 - June 19

Happy Birthday, Donna! And thanks to our many friends that sent her Birthday Greetings including talking pigs and squirrels. Today was spent with my cousin that I have not see in 25 or 30 years. There was much catching up and old stories to tell.

One tale I forgot to relate to you was that yesterday afternoon late, we decided to take the car into the booming metropolis of Fountain, CO and find a car wash. Our poor Saturn was covered in dirt from miles of Kansas and Nebraska gravel roads, not to mention a few miles of interstate highway repairs. We literally had to use the car wash vacuum to suck all of the rocks and dirt off of the windshield wipers and the vents at the base of the windshield. But that is not really the story. As we were driving into Fountain, we passed train tracks that were littered with twisted metal, railroad car wheels, huge piles of coal and general debris. There were emergency vehicles everywhere. A train hauling coal had derailed a number of cars and it was a mess. We were amazed to see such a large pile of railroad car wheels all stacked on each other and scattered over this large yard. When we saw my cousin we asked about it and she said that the first part of the train had passed through the area fine but the center section of the train had derailed a number of cars tearing up the track. What a sight!