From mid-October through mid-May, I don’t travel farther than a day-trip to Denver. Although the thought of visiting somewhere warm and sunny is really, really tempting when the temperature drops to thirty below, I’ve learned to stay home during the seven months of winter.
If I make travel plans, especially those involving plane tickets, I’m just asking for three feet of snow to fall the night before I’m supposed to go. It’s like the mountains are a really clingy friend who doesn’t want me to leave (ever!).
That being said, I am currently planning some fun road trips for when the winter weather finally clears up. A friend of mine has convinced me to join her on a road trip to Iceland so we have been busy researching the best things to do in Iceland. So far, we have decided that we are going to rent a hire car so that we can explore the country at our own pace. Have you ever been to Iceland? Let me know if so as I would love to hear all about your time there. I would also love to visit Yosemite National Park at some point this year too. I’ve seen so many pictures of it and it just looks beautiful. I’ve always dreamed about chartering a plane and seeing the park from above. One of the private plane sites I have been looking at is similar to Jettly (see it here) and it wasn’t as expensive as I thought. I would defiantly get some amazing pictures from the skies! I’ve also found a great RV Rental company but I haven’t booked anything just yet. It’s just an idea for now!
Anyway, when I learned that my lovely Sourcebooks editor, Mary, would be at the Colorado Romance Writers mini-conference this past weekend, I was determined to make the two-hour drive to meet her in person for the first time. Of course, it snowed on Friday.
Ignoring the sleet and snow and ice pellets and whatever else was falling from the sky, I drove to Denver to meet with Mary on Friday afternoon. Since I was going to be taking her to the airport on Saturday, I gave myself enough time to get the truck cleaned. My wonderful, twelve-year-old, dented, non-matching-topper-topped pickup looked odd sitting at the car wash among the Lexuses (Lexi?) and BMWs. Guilt inspired me to tip well, since the poor employees cleaned up a year’s worth of gravel-road dust and dog hair and cookie crumbs. Plus, I felt extra-bad for the car wash people, since the guy in front of me–the one with the $70,000 SUV–tipped the two guys working on his vehicle a whole dollar.
Truck gleaming (well, as gleam-y as it gets, at least), I met with Mary for an awesome face-to-face chat. We talked about the Search and Rescue series, hashed out the details of my second series proposal (to be published 2017-ish), and discussed fascinating publishing facts (apparently, readers love books set in Texas). It was a treat to be able to geek out over the whole process. Normally, there’s a limit to how long I can blab about book stuff before the other person’s eyes glaze over.
I headed home that night to feed the dogs and the wood boiler (both are equally demanding, although the wood boiler is not as yippy) and returned to Denver for the mini-conference on Saturday. Of course, it was still snowing.
Despite the weather, I returned Mary to the airport and then returned myself to the mountains. By Sunday morning, eight inches of snow had fallen.
The dogs decided it was a good day to sleep in.
I, on the other hand, got up early. Enthused by the meeting with Mary, I was revved and ready to write.