Arrived Safely in Golden, Colorado

Posted on by Julia

February 21, 2025

On February 19 (Wednesday), we left the house covered with snow and bare rooms.

Backyard
Odd Room
Living Room
Dinning Room

Through snow and ice, with winter weather advisories and warnings, Cliff the Big Red Truck rolled to Junction City, Kansas.

Alabama
Tennessee
Crusted with Ice (Truck and Ground)
Welcome Center
Man in a Kilt with Two Dogs at Truck Stop

In Junction City, Kansas, Bruce fueled up at Sapp Bros while I found a nearby Motel 6 that took pets. We will not be staying in another Motel 6. It was scary on the inside. The hall lights on the first floor were so dim, you could barely see. The elevator didn’t work, so we had to use the stairs to get to the 3rd floor.

There were only a couple of cars in the lot, but we were told the hotel was full. It was so quiet I don’t believe anyone was staying there. The 3rd floor had smoking rooms and we managed go up the stairway that reeked of cigarette smoke. The hallway was incredibly nasty smelling. We came up the smoking side of the hotel.

Fortunately, the room didn’t smell and appeared to be clean. We had no hot water in the shower. I declined to take a cold shower since I was still trying to warm up from the trip from the truck to the room. It was -10 F outside when we were getting our luggage.

The temperature reached -12 F and poor Nox didn’t want anything to do with being outside.

Nox thought she wanted to go outside. On being taken outside for potty, she walked about 10 steps and lay down in the snow crying pitifully. I picked her up and we hurried back inside.

Bruce held her paws in his hands to warm them up. Nox has decided Bruce is her favorite person now.

We left the hotel around 7:00 AM. Bruce had gone downstairs and started the truck to warm it up. When Nox and I headed downstairs, Nox made it extremely clear she didn’t want to be down. I put her down briefly to see if she would be willing to pee and Nox just asked to be picked up.

Bruce drove through the rest of the way through Kansas. At the rest stops in Kansas, with the temperatures being below 0 F, Nox didn’t want to get out of the truck, so we didn’t make her. At a rest stop in Colorado, the weather was a lot warmer, it was 23 F. Nox was finally happy to get out and pee. She wanted to walk around and enjoy the heat wave. Bruce and I switched places and I drove the rest of the way.

We arrived just before the winter storm. Once parked, we got out to check into the hotel. We managed to get all our luggage to our room before it started to snow.

Nox liked the new room.

Bruce wanted to see the conditioned storage unit and get some measurements. It was snowing by then, big fat flakes of snow.

This morning, we had about five to six inches of snow covering the truck. The snow washed off a lot of the crud the truck had picked up.

Bruce Cleaning Off Snow

We had lunch with a couple of friends today. It was great to see them.

Bruce and Nox are currently taking a nap.

It feels so strange and a bit sad to be traveling without our RV being pulled behind us.

24 thoughts on “Arrived Safely in Golden, Colorado”

  3. I feel for you. My last Motel 6 was in 1980 in Brownsville, Texas. I will spare you my horror story. I would sleep in my car if I was ever that desperate again! I hope you enjoy some time in Colorado and Nox can recover. Maybe you need to get her a litter box for the next cold travel. Blessings to you all!

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    1. I had no idea that Motel 6 was such a horror! We’ve stayed at Motel 8’s in the past and they’ve been okay, cheap and clean, with everything working. I expected the Motel 6 to be similar, boy was I wrong! My sinuses are still trying to recover from being exposed to the cigarette smoke odor inside that rank Motel 6.

      Nox is fine now. She usually enjoys snow and trying to turn it yellow. She grew up in Colorado after all! Since it was so cold (-10 to -12), we were carrying her, except to put her down to give her a chance to pee.

      I don’t plan to ever travel through such brutal cold again! Of course, best laid plans and all! The weather is supposed to be nice next week when we are loading the truck and driving back home to Alabama.

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      2. We lived in northern Alabama for 5 years and still have friends in the general area. Bruce and I loved living there. I had beautiful gardens and a pond. While Colorado still feels like home, it will have to be a second home. The cost of living is high in the Denver area and it was a constant challenge to grow vegetables. Water was often an issue. We could’ve moved to a different part of Colorado, but that would’ve defeated the purpose. In Alabama, we bought a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house on 5 acres for just over $300,000. To find a house in that price range in Denver area, well, it wouldn’t be in a good part of town and the lot would be tiny.

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  6. We had the same problems when our little 10 lb yorkie poo dog was still alive. When Nox did not want to pee in the extreme cold, did she just hold it? We tried getting our dog got to pee on a pee mat in the garage, but she was too old to learn new tricks. Instead she was peeing on a rug somewhere in the house.

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Published by Julia