the last leg

The last leg of the trip really started yesterday, Saturday, in the cool of a Wyoming dawn, behind the Bighorn Mountains.
By the time I had turned south onto I25, there at Buffalo,  I'd enjoyed the day's first shower -- brief and cool. Wyoming on my windscreen.
As a truck driver told me at the Piegan border crossing,  "it's beautiful when it's green." And right now it's all green.
Cattle, horses and antelope scattered across the folded hills of Wyoming east of the mountains. The pavement's good, deer mind their manners, I can think about the scenery and the trip.
Reflecting...
I trimmed four days from the schedule -- opting out of the Arctic Circle and a meander down the center of Wyoming. Before I left home, in one of her worrying moments Jessica asked what I'd do if I got way up here and I got tired. "I'll come home," I said. And so I did. On the way south, sort of, eventually,  I made good on my goal of visiting Stewart/Hyder, camped in the shadow of Mt. Robson, had my breath taken away by the Skeena, Stikine, Fraser and Bulkley river basins along the Yellowhead Hwy.
I met a terrific fellow -- Theo Huisman -- who's exactly the sort of fellow you'd want as a neighbor... a do-anything guy who in some ways reminds me of my brother-in-law.
Saturday included north-Denver traffic, even worse than I remembered -- and lunch at Johnson's Corner,  a lunch I'd promised myself many times through the years. (The coconut pie was quite good, but not Bumbleberry Pie good.)
Worn out from the Wyoming cross-winds and the heat that began to build along about Cheyenne. I pushed into Kansas, eventually quitting at Russell.
I like Kansas, both the hills and the flatness.  This June it's wet... so wet the wheat farmers can't get their combines in the field. But the corn is crazy.
Today, Sunday, the last day, second half of the final leg. Eight miles from Russell, I take shelter in a truck stop -- hiding from one of those gawdawful Kansas storms with jagged bolts of lightning exploding a dozen at a time.
Eventually, the worst of it passes and I mount up, grateful for the rain and the coolness. Oklahoma is ahead and it will be a hot slog through the day. Yep it was.
The thing about an Oklahoma road is this: if it's not a toll road, it's ragged; if it is a toll road, it's merely rough, pitted.
I cross the Red, flowing a bit downstream from Texarkana, and I'm two hours from home.
Except what genius decided that US Hwy 271, four lanes wide, should have a 60 mph speed limit from Gilmer to Gladewater?
I arrive, the garage door is open, Jessica's waiting.

Home. Good to be here.  Great trip, eye opening,  jaw dropping. But it's good to be here.