Fleetwood Mac and more

Over 14,000 fans packed every nook and cranny of the Pepsi Center in Denver last Friday night to see the Fleetwood Mac concert and the result was magical. Various iterations of the band have been around since 1967 but the current line-up is the band most of us are familiar with; Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and, after a 16 year hiatus away from the band, Christie McVie. You may remember me writing about them a couple of years ago when I took my family to see them in Tulsa. My youngest son Will was the only one who couldn't attend so when I found out they were appearing in Denver and that my favorite Fleetwood Mac member, Christie McVie, would be back with them, I called Will and asked him if he wanted to go. When he said yes, I bought the tickets right away. Not much is cheap anymore and certainly not Fleetwood Mac tickets but after watching and listening to them perform some of my all-time favorite songs in an almost three-hour long concert, I have no regrets about paying big bucks for close-to-the-stage tickets.

The most amazing thing about the band is that they're my age, ranging in ages from 65 to 71 and they seem better now than ever which certainly proves that age is only a mindset.

After I picked Will up at the airport and before we checked into our hotel, we enjoyed a late lunch at the Tilted Kilt in downtown Denver. The Kilt is much like Twin Peaks and, although I didn't enjoy it as much, it served the purpose because it was the first bite of food either one of us had had that day. After we filled ourselves up, we drove to the downtown Embassy Suites, the newest Embassy in Denver, and it was by far the most elegant Embassy Suites I've ever been in. The first three floors were all meeting and banquet rooms so the lobby, restaurant and bar were on the fourth floor.

A security enhancement I hadn't seen at other Embassy's was a card slot in each elevator that required a guest to insert their room keys to get to where you were going. If you had no room key, you couldn't go to your floor. This isn't flawless of course because anyone can get on the elevator with a guest and simply go to the floor that the guest is going to which gives one access to all the other floors but at least the hotel is trying to protect its guests. We stayed at Embassy for three nights and everything was above board. We had a room on the 13th floor which offered a wondrous view of part of downtown Denver along with the peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the west.

All the services were superb including the manager's complimentary happy hour and the free hot breakfast. I had scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and French toast each morning and although it wasn't a gourmet breakfast by any definition, it filled me up and that was all I was interested in at that time of the morning.

Saturday afternoon we drove 30 miles up in the mountains to Evergreen to an old friend's bar and restaurant. The friend is Scott Kasch, better known by his friends around this area as Norm, who previously cooked at the Rocket Inn in Indianola, the Kelly Creek Pub in McCook, and the Bears' Cave in Culbertson. We had steaks and suds at his establishment called the Whippletree and there was a nice crowd there while we were eating, drinking and talking to Norm. The next day, he drove down to Golden and took the light rail to Denver so he could watch NFL football with us at my favorite sports bar in Denver, The Sports Column, which is rated as one of the twenty best sports bars in America by Sports Illustrated.

It snowed in Denver on Sunday but since we weren't leaving until Monday, I was hoping it wouldn't be an issue. As it turned out, Denver had only a trace of snow and when I let Will out at the airport at 11 am on Monday, it was 38 degrees with bright blue skies and I felt good about my drive back to McCook.

The only thing I was unsure about was whether to take the northern route through Ft. Morgan, Yuma and Wray or the southern route on 1-70 to Colby and then north to McCook. The weather forecasts on Sunday were predicting that the worst part of the storm would be north so I decided to go south. But as I drove east, the sunshine gave way to clouds and more and more snow on the ground was being seen. About that time, I got a call from Al Gunther who also attended the concert with his wife and then went skiing for a couple of days. He told me they were at Fort Morgan, had seen numerous vehicles that had slid either into the median or off the side of the road, that all the schools were closed and that the two-lane drive through the plains of Colorado was most likely not going to be pleasant. I told him it was so far, so good with me but I spoke too soon.

Shortly after our call ended, I saw the first snow on the Interstate and it gradually got worse from there. Finally, about 12 miles west of Burlington, two tractor-trailer trucks were jack-knifed across both lanes of eastbound traffic which required the Interstate to be closed. We were shuffled onto a state highway headed towards Burlington in almost total white-out conditions because of the snow being blown across the road thanks to a howling north wind. It was impossible to see anything except straight ahead and I just hoped the road was straight because I was the lead car and everybody was following me. Thankfully it was and even though the 12 mile drive took 40 minutes to navigate, I once again ended up back on the Interstate and drove completely out of the snow 15 minutes later.

I never take a trip without something out of the ordinary happening and this was no different. Opie Taylor, son of the fictional Andy Taylor in the Andy Griffith Show would describe my trips as adventure living and I would agree with him.

Because without adventure in your life, what's the point?