Colorado Adventure Day 2

We finally drove out of the rain after about 12 hours of straight water on the windshield. We drove into Nebraska early in the morning. It was just about as flat as Iowa, I really found it interesting as we got near the North Platte River. My son Michael always talked about the goose hunting on the North Platte, so I naturally thought of him. As the sun rose we stopped in Kerneay, Nebraska for gas. We knew that this was also the town where the 2nd Cabela’s store was at. We followed the signs to try and find it with no luck. We had all but given up and began to turn around when I saw the sign on the little store front. It was an old small factory building with a small water tank outside. I was amazed at how small the store was, we are used to seeing such huge Cabela’s stores, like the ones we passed in Chicago and Omaha. It was 6am so they weren’t open yet, we got our gas and headed west.

Later that morning we stopped in North Platte, Nebraska for breakfast just beating the Sunday morning church rush. As we planned our next stop for gas we noticed that the original Cabela’s store was within our reach. It was in Sidney, Nebraska and then it was on to Denver. So we made our stop at Cabela’s and bought a few things for the hunt.

Sidney Nebraska Cabela's Store #1

It just wouldn’t be right to drive right past four of their stores and not stop and buy something.
We then turned our sights on Denver. As we got closer to Denver I kept noticing small dirt piles in fields by the road. I later learned that these were prairie dog dens. Then I started to see the little varmints sticking their heads out of the holes. I wish I had time to shoot a few of those little hole diggers. We arrived in Denver around 1pm local time.

Denver Colorado Skyline

We had made arrangements to visit with Aneal Roney from Bowcast.com where we spent about an hour and a half talking with him.

We discussed the tactics we would need to hunt elk and mule deer. It was nice to finally meet a fellow podcast host. We had talked on the phone a couple of times and tried to plan to meet while we were in Colorado. So it was nice to finally put a face and name together.
Next we were off to Steamboat Springs for the night. It was supposed to be a 3 hour drive there, but we stopped at Sportsman’s Warehouse to purchase our elk tags, which turned into a nightmare. We thought that there were still 21 tags left for elk archery season. When we tried to purchase them we were told that they were for muzzleloader season! We then scrambled to think of what to do. We decided to try and buy a muzzleloader and the gear so we could hunt elk. When we got to the counter to purchase the gun and buy the tags we were told that we couldn’t purchase the license since the season had started the day before. They weren’t allowed to sell firearm license once the season had started. So much for hunting elk!

We left the store a bit upset, but we still had the mule deer hunt secured! Next we hit the highway again to head into the mountains. The sun was setting as we reached the Rockies. It was a beautiful sight to behold!

Sunset Over The Rockies

I had never seen anything so magnificent in all my life. Then the traffic stopped! A traffic jam in the mountains, then we found out it was road construction, I thought that was only done in Michigan! Finally we got on our way again and made our way through the Eisenhower Tunnel! We were at about 12,000 feet and the pressure began to get to me. My joints, ears, teeth, and sinus’ began to hurt extremely bad until we dropped down in altitude. You could tell we were flat landers. We had gotten on a two lane road for the last 60 miles and made it about 10 miles when we ran into a road block. We had to detour around and through the mountains on a small pig trail road which added another 15 miles or so to our trip. We finally made it into Steamboat Springs around 10:30pm local time. What a day!