25 April 2012 – DAY 5 – Fizzle, Fizzle, f’shizzle

ALL TIMES ARE LOCAL (MDT)

  • 0300 – night bathroom run! Gotta avoid caffeine with dinner.
  • 0400 – neighbors making noise So I can’t sleep! Transcribed yesterday’s paper chase log to this blog. Pure hell to enter WordPress entries via Safari!! (I discovered the WordPress app afterwards. This will be easier/saner going forward.)
  • 0900 – Laundry run
  • 1030 – return to hotel ; pack van
  • 1035 – weather briefing: we have a chance for storms that might produce small hail and some lightning in the plains of Eastern Colorado.
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  • 1130 – lunch at Kim Lin Chinese Buffet
  • 1230 – Depart La Junta, CO northbound
  • 1315 – stop 2 miles south of Arlington, CO to photograph an old storm shelter
  • 1327 – Arlington, CO – stop at rest area and photograph an outhouse. Yes, it’s a SLOW DAY!
  • 1341 – N on CO59(?); arrive at Eads, CO to watch the sky, data updates, and toss a Frisbee around.
  • 1530 – leave Eads on US287N, heading to an area where storm development has started.
    20120425-203840.jpg
  • 1607 – turn onto northbound CO59
  • 1625 – stop at I-70 for fuel, washroom visits and snacks; continue north to US36W
  • 1707 – pass Cope, CO
  • 1715 – turn north toward Otis,CO
  • 1740 – dinner at Mom’s Restaurant in Otis
  • 1830 – stop west of Otis. Our target storm has fizzled, having run out of moisture.
    20120425-203904.jpg
  • 1900 – return to Otis; after Bill gets us hotel rooms in Yuma, we head to US34E and on to Yuma. On the way, illustrates how super cells look on radar, using a radar image of a southeast moving storm entering Illinois from near Keokuk, IA
    20120425-204917.jpg
  • 1920 – arrive at the Nelson Inn in Yuma. Bill announces we meet at the van at 9 a.m. (MDT) due to a heavy travel day. Tomorrow appears to be our ‘big day’ for our excursion. Updated this blog
  • 2130 – lights out

24 April 2012 – DAY 4 – Convection without Conviction

[editor’s note: entering WordPress blog entries via iPhone is pure hell. It took almost 2 hours to write this entry!]

ALL TIMES BELOW ARE LOCAL (MDT)

I’ve reverted to using paper chase logs, transcribing them after the fact. My log for 24 April follows:

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  • 0700 – wake up
  • 0930 – update blog on hotel PC (netbook dead
  • 1030 – pack van; weather briefing
  • 1100 – depart Sands Hotel, Raton, NM
  • ____ – Kmart stop; bought hand pump and inflated Bill’s football. Had fun watching our Spanish and Portugese guests toss around “a demented American fĂștbol” [ed.- my words, not theirs]
  • 1130 – depart Raton on I-25N
  • ___ – enter Colorado via Raton Pass; gorgeous snow-capped Rockies rise to our west, but there is no safe place to pull over for a photo opp. Dang!
  • Leave I-25 at exit 13; eat lunch after an extended search for Lee’s Ribs (which appeared closed for some time). Subway, here we come!
  • 1323 – arrive at Model, CO; photograph the decaying cantina and supermercado. It makes me sad to see the skeleton of what was likely hub of activity, but Bill loves to photograph old buildings.20120425-070552.jpg
  • 1600 – we wander south and east, to Folsom, NM and tiny Walt’s Corner, in hopes we may see some daytime lightning. 20120425-070733.jpg

    The weather is being totally uncooperative . As we wait, we feed one of my apples to a horse behind the general store and toss a frisbee with our Spanish and Portugese guests. My impression: it’s a new experience for them.20120425-070717.jpg

  • 1704 – depart south on CO 389; re-enter NM a minute later, about 14 miles N of Folsom.
  • ____ – photo stop to look over weak storm to our SE<20120425-070749.jpg/li>
  • ____ – continue SE to Des Moines, N
  • ____ – double back to Colorado
  • 1841 – head east on US 160.
  • 1914 – angle north on CO 109 toward La Junta
  • 2030 – dinner at Boss Hogg’s BBQ. I had the BBQ combo plate. “Yummers!” Francisco had a plain hamburger (no lettuce, no tomato, no cheese. Alberto had the lasagna. Too bad neither embraced the “Midwest Barbeque Experience.”
  • 2134 – turn in for the evening at the Mid-town Motel. My fridge smells very stale, as if a dead animal had been stored there. Phew!

Travel: 270 miles