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Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  This book is dedicated to my two Grandsons, Edison (AKA my Pal) and Winston (AKA my Pal Jr.). You boys have brought more joy to our lives than we could have ever imagined. I hope that one day you read this and it inspires you to have great adventures, go the extra distance to spend time with people you love, do the little things that will make a big difference in people's lives, and most of all, create and share stories from the road YOU traveled.
Love, GrandPALes Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories 00. On The Road Again (AKA My Road Trip 4/27-8/21, 2017).
01. Dedication: To Edison And Winston. 02. Table Of Contents. 03. Preface: This Will Help You Find The Missing Links. 04. Acknowledgements: To Those Who Went The Extra Mile. 05. Introduction: Road Trips Are Like A Box Of Chocolates 06. Rocky Mountain High Homecoming 07. Help Me Be A Happy Camper :-) 08. Colorad-oh? 1: Expect The Unexpected (Weather) 09. Colorad-oh? 2: Your Altitude Determines Your Attitude. 10. Colorad-oh? 3: It Takes Street Smarts To Survive. 11. Colorad-oh? 4: It Really Is God's Country. 12. Colorad-oh? 5: What A Bunch Of Animals! 13. Colorad-oh? 6: This Bud's For You. 14. Colorad-oh? 7: The Art Of Being Colorful. 15. Oh Canada! Summer Tour 2017 16. Colorad-oh? 8: Good Places For Good Times. 17. Colorad-oh? 9: Growing Stronger Every Day. 18. Colorad-oh? 10: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! 19. Colorad-oh? 11: The Art Of Travel. 20. Colorad-oh? 12: Wherefore ART Thou? 21. Amazing Faces: Alex and Harper 22. Amazing Faces: Danny and Kat 23. Colorad-oh? 13: What A Wake Up Call. 24. Amazing Places: Garden Of The Gods, CO. 25. Amazing Places: Green Mountain Falls, CO. 26. Colorad-oh? 14: People Are Fit To Play. 27. Amazing Faces: John Taylor 28. Amazing Places: Morrison & Evergreen, CO. 29. Colorad-oh? 15: The Art Of Travel 2. 30. Amazing Places: Grand Junction, CO. 31. Colorad-oh? 16: Something To Crow About. 32. Amazing Faces: Salida, CO. 33. Amazing Places: Salida, CO. 34. Colorad-oh? 17: This Is A Sign For You To Enjoy Salida. 35. Happy Birthday To America The Beautiful! 36. Amazing Places: St. Elmo, CO. 37. Amazing Places: Crested Butte, CO. 38. Amazing Places: Chillin' In Lake City, CO. 39. Amazing Places: The Backyard In Lake City, CO. 40. Amazing Places: Silver Thread Scenic Byway, CO. 41. Colorad-oh? 18: Picture Perfect Photographers. 42. Colorad-oh? 19: Have Fun, Or Die Tryin'. 43. Colorad-oh? 20: Silver Linings PLAY Book. 44. Amazing Faces: Silverton, CO. 45. Amazing Places: Silverton, CO. 46. Colorad-oh? 21: Slip Sliding Away. 47. Colorad-oh? 22: A Tale Of Three Cities. 48. Amazing Places: Montrose, CO. 49. Amazing Places: Carbondale, CO. 50. Amazing Places: Aspen, CO. 51. Colorad-oh? 23: Wonder Women Are Everywhere. 52. Amazing Faces: Yolanda and Jerry. 53. Amazing Faces: The Debbies. 54. Amazing Faces: The Big Chillin' Gang. 55. Amazing Places: Motown Museum 56. Amazing Faces: 2017 RHS Classes Of The 60's Party 57. Oh Canada! Let The Adventure Begin! 58. Amazing Places: Woodstock 59. Amazing Places: Going Green 60. Amazing Faces: Ginger Nelson 61. Amazing Places: Saint Andrews 62. Amazing Places: Saint Martins 63. Amazing Places: Edmundston 64. Amazing Faces: Hallé And Jeff. 65. Amazing Places: Barrie, Ontario 66. Amazing Faces: Dean Wiseman 67. Amazing Places: Orangeville, Ontario. 68. Oh Canada!: Ah'll Be Bach. 69. I Wish Again I Was In Michigan 70. Amazing Places: Clarkston, MI. 71. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yeti. 72. Iowa. How Sweet It Is. 73. Iowa. How Diverse It Is. 74. Amazing Places: Field Of Dreams 75. Amazing Places: Parker, CO. 76. A Picture Perfect Ending For My Road Trip 2017. 77. Postscript: My "Grand" Conclusion. :-) © 2017 Les Maness. All rights reserved. Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  About This Book: If I learned anything in my road trip to all 48 states last year it was to expect the unexpected. So this year I went with my eyes - and mind - wide open to whatever the road had to offer. Hopefully, you will get some sense of that as you follow along. And hopefully it will encourage you to explore some of the places and links I've included so that you too come back with some fun stories and recommendations to share. With that said, here's a few things that might help prepare you for the pages and the road ahead.
About Me: When I'm not authoring Encouraging Words or gathering Stories From The Road Les Traveled, I am a Dad, Granddad, writer, photographer, marketer and trainer who calls Arizona home. For more, see my Blog, Books, Gigs and Photos at www.LesManess.com. About The Photos: Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs were taken by and are the exclusive copyrighted property of Les Maness (AKA LesManess.com). To purchase photos or the rights to publish images or content, please contact me at lesmaness at gmail.com. About The Missing Links: I have left out some additional pages that appeared my original blogs. However, to preserve continuity and offer added reference, I have made them available as links on my Archives page. About The Dates: To publish this ebook in a timely manner, I built it using Weebly's remarkable website builder blogging program. That meant I had to manually reorder the blog dates so they would read in proper sequence. So please ignore the dates under each header as they do not pertain to the actual start and end dates which were April 27, 2017 to Aug 21, 2017. © 2017 Les Maness. All rights reserved. Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  I want to thank the many friends who followed, encouraged, advised and/or joined me on this trip via social media. I appreciate every kind, wise word and every clever, wisecrack too. In addition, I want to express my gratitude to all the remarkable friends who made an effort to spend time with me along the way. Since I can’t possibly name you all, I will just reiterate what I hope were my parting words – Thank You. And finally, I want to give a special thanks to all of you who were kind enough to welcome me into your homes in the following order below. As always, I thank you for putting me up and for putting up with me. Les
PS. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Michael Southern of Earnhardt Hyundai for helping me get my Tucson – AKA my car camping home away from home – in time for this trip. Between the great gas mileage and plenty of room to stretch out, I literally slept easier because of you. Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories   Road trips are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. Sometimes they turn out sweeter than you could have ever possibly imagined. Other times your plan gets so squished you have to pick another one. And that’s exactly what happened when I went On The Road Again (AKA My Road Trip 2017).
As you can probably guess from the chronological order of my blogs (and their updates), my original road trip plan had three key components. The first was to spend as much of the summer as I could in Colorado. The second was to do a coast to coast tour of Canada. (You can see the original and update route here.) And the third was to photograph as many Amazing Faces and Amazing Places as I could along the way. While the Colorado plan did not go quite as expected, I ended up having a far greater experience than I anticipated. I got to do things like house sit in majestic Aspen, CO, (yeah, I know…tough gig.), visit lifelong friends, make some great new friends, and camp in some of the most beautiful places on earth. The transcontinental Canada trip was only a partial success because I only made it part of the way. I had to forgo the second half of the trip because of the terrible forest fires engulfing the west. But what I did see and experience in eastern Canada was so incredible, it made me super excited about picking up where I left off and completing the western half of the journey next year. As for the Amazing Faces and Amazing Places, I’ve kept them in order in which I photographed them on this trip. But you can also find links to them by trip and category here. So with that mixed bag - make that “mixed box of chocolates” – as a set up, I invite you to follow along on my 10,000+ mile trek. It is my hope that in doing so it makes you laugh, escape, share, ponder, wonder, and if you are able, make your own plans to get…(Cue Willie Nelson singing it.)... On The Road Again. Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  In the early 1970's, a former choir boy and aspiring engineer by the name of Henry John Deutschendorf Jr moved to Colorado. He was so awed by it's serene beauty that he wrote and sang about it. Since his name didn't exactly roll off the tongue, he changed it to honor a mile high city there. And when John Denver released his love song to the state called Rocky Mountain High, it caused a cultural shift - and in some cases, it changed history itself.
I was part of the cultural shift. I grew up dreaming of moving to California to lift weights, drive dune buggies, date surfer chicks and hang out at the beach. But when John Denver sang these lyrics, "He was born in the summer of his 27th year. Coming home to a place he'd never been before.", something resonated in me. So I - like countless others in my generation - decided to pack a bag and see what this place called Colorado was all about. I came out on camping trip with two best friends from Roosevelt High School, Wyandotte, MI, Butch Cox and Bruce Boardman. I was so moved by what I saw, I ended up staying for the whole summer in Colorado Springs with my cousin, Gary Mitchell. My buddies had to drive back, so I got a job in a small health club in the Springs, and then hitchhiked back just in time for the new semester at Eastern Michigan University. After that trip, I was never quite the same. I kept dreaming about Colorado and telling all my friends how I would go back one day. And over the years have I fulfilled that promise and kept coming back. This Story From The Road Les Traveled is about my past and present journeys through this magnificent state. I hope I am able to adequately share some of the things that make it truly worthy of a love song - one that is now an official state song. On that note, I'll leave you with this link to the song that changed so many lives - Rocky Mountain High - and some of the lyrics below that still resonate today. And the Colorado rocky mountain high. I've seen it raining fire in the sky. You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply. Rocky mountain high. Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  Original Post: From June 6-13 I am going to take a car camping trip throughout Southwest Colorado starting in Salida, CO and stopping in Aspen, CO. I am going to visit and photograph some of the Amazing Places I've never seen, but heard so much about - including Telluride, which I actually wrote print and radio copy for many years ago. So if you have any suggestions for places to shoot, unique restaurants, overnight stops, friendly faces I should see, etc., your suggestions will literally make me a happy camper. Now really, how often in life do you get the opportunity to do that? :-)
Update 2017: So many kind people responded to this request that I was able to visit more remarkable cities, see more jaw-dropping beauty, meet more interesting people and photograph more unique art than I ever dreamed possible. Plus, I managed to get my good friend and expert camper, John Taylor to join me for the trip. As you will see in the stories about this part of the trip, having everyone's input and John's good company and expertise made me one happy camper indeed! Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  What better place to start with things that surprise me in CO than with the weather - where locals say there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. And here's the proof. I drove up from Anthem, AZ to Grand Junction, CO at the end of April. My high school buddy, Albert Przybylski took one look at my light jacket, shirt and pants and immediately started giving me winter clothes. The same thing happened a few days later when I went to visit another high school buddy, David Kwiatkowski in Aspen. (Can you guess that Wyandotte, MI was a big Polish city?) :-) I didn't think much of it until I woke up a couple of days ago and it was SNOWING in Colorado Springs! In mid-May. When we'd already hit 106 degrees back in AZ. And we had just a little dusting of it. Nearby towns had over a foot of snow! Plus they tell me that it can snow in the mountain towns any time it feels like it. So nearly EVERYONE watches the weather here like their lives depend on it - which it often does. Guess I'll just have to bundle up and brrrr-ave the elements. :-)
Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories  It's been said that your attitude determines your altitude in life. Well, in Colorado the opposite is also true because elevation impacts everything. Case in point. I once had a bag of chips and a bag of vegetables in the car when I left Arizona. And by the time I drove to CO, the shrunken bag of vegetables was puffed up to nearly bursting at the seams. As for the chips, well, they barely made it out of my driveway, but that's another story. :-)
As for your mood? When I have come up here out of shape (stupid chips!), I had altitude related headaches for days and climbing upstairs was a literally a breathtaking, leaden thighed chore. So need-Les to say, my attitude sucked until I adapted. However, when I've been in shape, I had no side effects. And the only thing that took my breath away was views like this one in front of my favorite breakfast place in the world - The Pantry in Green Mountain Falls. Cover Contents Books Home Hire Stories |