Rocky Mountain High
When I first started working from home, my biggest dream, besides not leaving Emily in daycare, was that I thought it would be so cool to be able to have a 100% portable business.
Back in 2001, laptops and mini’s weren’t quite the rage. On the contrary, about the only portable computer at the time was IBM’s Thinkpad and it was big bucks. Back then, many of us were still on dial-up and AOL while waiting for DSL lines to come into the neighborhood.
How things have changed and how things will continue to change! Today, my laptop is more powerful than my desktop and everything I need to access for my business, is web-based.
We can run our business from the beach of Bermuda or the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. For us, it’s Colorado and here’s why:
What’s your why?
The Second Day of the Drive
This is the view from the overlook in Colorado Springs. After yesterday’s long, long day, the 5 hours left to get to Colorado Springs didn’t seem like it would take that long.
As you cross the border from Nebraska into Colorado, you think, “O.K. Cool, not too much longer, right?”
Wrong.
When you’re following a UHaul carrying an auto-transport, it’s not like you can do 80 MPH on the highway.
I guess I never realized how much further south Colorado Springs is from Denver. I knew it was 70 miles, but I didn’t realize it was considered “southern Colorado” We didn’t go into Denver, though, or that would have been a long way here, we drove around Denver and I have to tell you, there’s not much going on on the eastern side of Colorado on the way down.
Visit to Manitou Springs
If you ever get out here, you simply have to stop in the quaint little town on Manitou Springs. It’s one of those towns with one main street full of shops, restaurants and places that are created and owned by local business owners.
Manitou Springs is located just to the south and a little bit west of Colorado Springs. It was kind of funny, in a way, because we saw a lot of tourists and were thinking, “Well, I guess we can’t call ourselves tourists any more because we just moved here!”
We stopped in the cutest little chocolate / ice cream store, Pike’s Peak Chocolate and had the best homemade rocky road ice cream. Yum! We also stopped in a bath / body shop, Salus, featuring local, organic products who was just featured in the August issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. Congratulations, Salus!
Our Colorado Journey
One thousand miles doesn’t seem that long until you actually get in the car and start driving. We knew it was going to be an overnight trip and I have to tell you, Tuesday, 9/9 was the longest day of my life.
The weather was great to drive, no rain, no wind, clear skies. So, we got up early, loaded up the truck and moved to Colorado.. Springs that is.. Pike’s Peak, lots of skiing, blue skies.
I’ve never been to Iowa and never been to Nebraska and you don’t really realize how big of a country we live in until you drive through some of these states.
Nebraska is one big state. We drove for 14 hours on Tuesday and were going to stop in Kierney, NE, which would give us about only 7 hours of driving the next day. That seemed very doable.
