On Monday morning we awoke in Rawlins, Wyoming to a fresh dusting of snow outside our window. That's our Suburban in the foreground.

Eventually I'll figure out where to put the key.

Here's what I-80 looked like heading east out of Rawlins. We had about 90 minutes of this until the road finally was clear. There wasn't a lot of traffic out for some reason.

On Tuesday we arrived in Topeka at 10:00 AM. We gave the trailer a fairly thorough inspection - here I'm checking out the roof. It was cold that morning - somewhere in the high 30's.

After the successful inspection, we spent several more hours installing a complex weight distributing and sway controlling hitch system on the trailer called the "Hensley Arrow." It was a challenge, interesting, and we finished about 3:30, hooked the 7000 pound trailer to the Suburban, and headed out of the dealer's yard to a grocery store for supplies.

We drove to a nearby grocery store to stock up for the trip to Scottsdale, AZ. We found we couldn't fit in just one space in the parking lot!

Then we drove to a campground at a nearby reservoir to set up the trailer for the first time and put it through its paces. Everything worked well.

Although it was cold, it was the prettiest day (and spot) we'd seen up to this point.